When you can't be bothered to listen...

"I'm sending you a voice note as it's easier than typing," says that one annoying friend you keep in touch with for some reason.

Rejoice, we've got good news for you: WhatsApp are releasing a voice note transcription feature.

Saying the quiet part out loud

Sometimes, regardless of what your selfish friends believe, a voice note is not the right way to communicate. You may be in public, at a dinner, or simply not in the mood to hear 'uhhh' and 'ummm' for 10 minutes.

To enable the feature, go to Settings -> Chats -> Voice message transcripts. Then, long press those pesky voice notes and hit 'transcribe'.

This isn't precisely innovative...

Apple's Message app (~1bn monthly active users vs. WhatsApp's ~2bn) has had a voice note transcription feature for over a year. Applications like Microsoft Teams and Zoom even offer similar transcription features live, i.e. during the actual meeting.

Still, assuming you and your friends speak one of the supported languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Arabic, Danish, Finish, Malay, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Hebrew, or Thai), we're sure you'll welcome the feature.