WhatsApp voice messages are about to get a handy transcription tool

WhatsApp, like many other messenger apps, allow users to send voice messages. Voice messages are a way for people to send messages quickly instead of typing it out. The only problem is that the person receiving the message might not find it as convenient to listen to it, like if they’re in a meeting, in class, and so on.

That could change in a future update to the app. According to WABetaInfo, it appears that WhatsApp is working on a new feature for voice messages. This new feature introduces the ability to transcribe a voice message, meaning that it takes the audio recording and turns it into text.

In addition to it being convenient, it’s a great accessibility feature too. Since there are some people with hearing impairments, being able to transcribe a voice message to text will allow them to know what the message says. At the moment, it looks like only five languages are supported.

This includes English, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, and Hindi. We expect WhatsApp will eventually introduce support for more languages, but for now, this is what we have. The feature isn’t live yet and is only available to beta testers, so we might have to wait a bit before it goes live for all.