Meta-owned WhatsApp is working on a feature for Android devices that transcribes voice notes, suggests a new report. This feature leverages smartphone speech recognition tools to process voice notes directly on the device. The resulting text will appear in the chat window, providing a convenient option when audio playback isn’t feasible. This upcoming feature on WhatsApp could improve accessibility for users with hearing impairments. WABetaInfo, a WhatsApp feature tracker, discovered this functionality in the beta version of WhatsApp for Android version 2.24.7.8.
WABetaInfo, a feature tracking platform, discovered a forthcoming feature in WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.24.7.8: voice note transcription capability. Since it is still under development by Meta-owned chat platform, the feature remains inaccessible even to beta testers currently. Nonetheless, WABetaInfo has provided a preview image illustrating how the feature might appear upon release.
The screenshot shared by WABetaInfo reveals a pop-up card detailing the functionality of the upcoming feature upon its eventual release to users. A message notifies users that the app will require downloading 150MB of additional data to their smartphones to activate voice note transcription functionality.
WhatsApp will additionally notify users that it will employ on-device speech recognition, ensuring the app can deliver voice note transcripts while safeguarding user privacy and maintaining end-to-end encryption for messages. This also implies that already downloaded voice notes can be transcribed even without an active Internet connection.
Meanwhile, the world’s most-popular messaging platform has recently introduced a new privacy feature for Android users, which prevents them from taking screenshots of someone else’s profile pictures.
This innovative functionality underwent testing on the beta version of the app and has now been officially rolled out to all users. Additionally, WhatsApp has also commenced allowing beta testers to pin multiple messages within a chat, facilitating better accessibility to information in both individual and group chats. Although detailed information regarding this privacy feature that blocks profile picture screenshots has not been officially announced by Meta, its implementation has been observed and reported by Android Police.
