Developers WhatsApp has begun rolling out a new feature that will help users read voice messages when they cannot be heard. WhatsApp’s parent company Meta announced the new feature on the official WhatsApp blog:

Sending a voice message makes communicating with friends and family even more personal. There is something special about hearing the voice of a loved one, even when they are far away. Even though sometimes you’re in traffic, in a noisy place, or have a long voicemail that you can’t stop and listen to.

At such times, we are happy to provide transcripts of voice messages. Voice messages can be transcribed to text to help you keep track of your conversations no matter what you do.

WhatsApp Voice Transcripts can convert any voice message to plain text with on-device processing for greater privacy. WhatsApp claims that “no one else can hear or read your private messages.” Instagram voicemails not working on iPhone? Try these simple solutions

WhatsApp says voice message transcripts are being rolled out gradually, meaning all users should be able to access the feature in the coming weeks. Unlike other browsers like Telegram, where transcripts are only available to paid subscribers, the voice-to-text feature on WhatsApp is available for free to all users.

However, it is worth noting that very few languages ​​are currently supported. According to WhatsApp’s official documentation, voice messages can only be transcribed in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian. If you want to enable this feature, go to: “Settings” > “Chats” > “Voicemail translations” and select the language you want.

WhatsApp also adds that in certain scenarios, you may receive an “Error Transcript Unavailable” message even when trying to convert the message. This may be due to unsupported language, background noise, unrecognized words, etc. it could be. You can learn more about using voicemail transcripts in WhatsApp from the support article at this link.