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Until the second decade of the 2000s, when we saw someone with a mobile phone in their hand, it was common to see them holding it to their ear to talk, as a landline phone had always traditionally been used. But, with the arrival of the WhatsApp audio everything changed.

Nowadays, when we see someone with a mobile phone in their hand, the most normal thing is that they carry it as if it were a toast, speaking into the microphone to send audio messages or listening to them with the hands-free system so that everyone is aware of the conversation.

Audio messages are convenient for when you can’t pick up the phone or don’t have a second to write a message, however, many users use them regularly both to send a simple “yes” or “no” or to send messages lasting several minutes in podcast format.

Listening to audio messages requires dedicated attention if we want to understand what they are saying to us and a quiet environment in which to hear them. If not, different tricks can be used to transcribe audio messages to text very laborious process that very few people use.

Audio transcriptions are coming to WhatsApp

It seems that WhatsApp has finally realized that people are using audio messages more than usual, something that is annoying for those who receive them (which, in case it was not clear, is my case) and is working on a new function that is responsible for transcribe audios to text so that the user can read them calmly.

This application may also be initially intended to improve accessibility to people with hearing problems and we say maybe because if we knew we were talking to a deaf person, we would never think of sending them an audio message.

The solution to allow playing audio at different speeds The new feature available on WhatsApp is not a solution for all users, especially those of us who hate audio. This new feature, currently available in beta through the Android app, allows you to generate audio transcriptions of text in several languages, including Spanish, the third most spoken language in the world, in addition to English, Hindi, Russian and Portuguese.
 

According to the guys at WABetaInfo, who have discovered this new feature, this new function is available in version 2.24.25.5 of WhatsApp for Android. At the moment it is unknown when is it scheduled for release for all users. Considering that we are in the middle of summer, it is likely that at the earliest this feature will not be released until September.

If I want to listen to a podcast, I use Spotify, iVoox or any other platform where I can manage playback comfortably and where I listen to topics that interest me, not long, boring monologues that I stop paying attention to after 5 minutes.