Transcribe WhatsApp voice messages on iPhone, three ways
Three ways to transcribe WhatsApp voice messages on iPhone. WhatsApp's own transcripts, Voice Memos, and a share-to-app route that works offline for any audio.
By the end of this guide you will be able to turn a WhatsApp voice message, a Voice Memos recording, or any audio file on your iPhone into text you can read, search and share. You will start with the transcripts built into WhatsApp and Voice Memos, see where each one stops, and then use a share-to-app route that handles any audio, offline, with exports.
Start with what is already on your phone
Two of the three routes need nothing installed. If you only ever need to skim a voice note from a friend, one of them is probably enough, so try them first. Where they run out, the general answer is voice message transcription on iPhone in an app that accepts any audio file.
Route 1: WhatsApp's built-in voice message transcripts
WhatsApp can transcribe voice messages inside the chat. As of writing, the feature works on iPhone for a set of languages that WhatsApp has been expanding over time, and the transcription is done on the phone after you download a language pack.
Step 1: Turn transcripts on
- Open WhatsApp and go to Settings.
- Tap Chats.
- Tap Voice Message Transcripts and turn the switch on. On iPhone, WhatsApp relies on Apple's speech recognition for this, so Siri has to be enabled in the iPhone's own Settings first.
- Choose the language or languages you want. WhatsApp downloads a pack for each one; after that, transcription for that language does not need a connection.
Menu names shift a little between versions, so if you do not see the option in this exact place, search WhatsApp's Help Center for "voice message transcripts".
Step 2: Transcribe a message
Touch and hold a voice message in a chat and choose Transcribe. The text appears under the message after a moment. Tap it to expand, and touch and hold to copy.
Where it stops
- Language list. If the sender's language is not one you can download, there is no transcript.
- One message at a time. Each voice note is transcribed on its own; there is no way to transcribe a whole thread or a long back-and-forth into one document.
- Copy is the only export. You can copy the text and paste it somewhere else. There is no file export, no timestamps and no way to jump the audio to a sentence.
- Only WhatsApp voice messages. An audio file someone sent as an attachment, a forwarded recording from another app, or a Voice Memos file is not covered.
For a 40-second message from a friend this is exactly right. For a 12-minute voice note from a client that you need to quote from, it is thin.
Route 2: Voice Memos transcripts
Recent versions of iOS add transcripts to the Voice Memos app on supported iPhone models and for supported languages. If the audio you want is a Voice Memos recording, this is the shortest path. A separate guide covers what the Voice Memos transcript can and cannot do on both iPhone and Mac.
Step 1: Record or open a memo
Open Voice Memos and either make a new recording or tap an existing one. Apple's Voice Memos guide covers the recording side.
Step 2: View and copy the transcript
Open the recording and look for the transcript button (the icon with quotation marks). The transcript is generated on the phone and appears as plain text. Touch and hold to select and copy it, or use the share options to send the audio elsewhere.
Where it stops
- Supported models and languages only. If the button is missing, your iPhone or your language is not supported for transcripts yet. Check the Voice Memos section of the iPhone User Guide for the current list.
- Voice Memos only. You cannot bring a WhatsApp voice note or an MP3 into Voice Memos to have it transcribed.
- No speaker labels, no summaries, no timestamped exports. The transcript is text, and that is all.
Route 3: Share any audio to a transcription app
The third route is the general one: send the audio, whatever app it came from, to a transcription app that handles any file and gives you a real transcript with exports. ThinkScribe for iPhone works this way, and the steps below use it as the example. It runs speech recognition on the phone, so it works offline and nothing is uploaded.
Step 1: Install the app and download a model
Install ThinkScribe from the App Store (iOS 26 or later). On first launch it downloads open-source model weights once; that is the only network use for transcription. You can choose between Apple's on-device speech models, Whisper and Parakeet. Language detection is automatic across 90 or more languages, with a picker for 28 explicitly supported ones.
Step 2: Share a WhatsApp voice message
- In the chat, touch and hold the voice message.
- Choose Forward, then tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen (the square with an arrow) to open the iOS share sheet. On some versions there is a direct Share option in the menu instead.
- Choose ThinkScribe from the share sheet. If it is not in the row of apps, swipe to the end, tap More, and turn it on.
ThinkScribe imports the file and transcribes it in the background. WhatsApp voice notes typically arrive as OGG audio, which is one of the formats it accepts alongside MP3, M4A, WAV and FLAC. If you have several voice notes from the same conversation, share each one; they land as separate items in your library, each searchable.
Step 3: Share a Voice Memos recording or any other file
The same share sheet works from Voice Memos (tap the recording, then the share button, then ThinkScribe), from Telegram, from the Files app, or from a file attached to an email. Voice Memos saves M4A files, which import directly.
Step 4: Read, search and jump around
Once the transcript is ready, tap any word to play the audio from that point, which is the quickest way to check a name or a number you are not sure the model heard right. Every transcript goes into a searchable library, so a voice note from three months ago is one search away instead of a scroll through a chat.
If the recording has more than one person in it, such as a voice note where someone passes the phone around, or a meeting you recorded yourself, ThinkScribe tells the speakers apart. Name a speaker once and they stay named in future recordings. The speaker diarization article explains how that works and where it has limits.
Step 5: Export
When you need the text outside the app, export to TXT, Markdown, PDF or DOCX for documents, SRT or VTT if you want subtitles with timing, or JSON if you are feeding it to something else. Summaries can go straight to Apple Notes. This is the part the built-in routes lack: a client's long voice note becomes a dated PDF in the project folder, not a paragraph pasted into a text field.
Optional: summarise it
For a long voice note, the on-device AI can produce a summary or a list of action items in one tap, and you can ask questions about the transcript in a chat that cites the exact lines it used. Both run on the phone, so they work with no connection. If you do this often on a Mac too, the transcribe audio to text on Mac guide covers the desktop side, and the transcribe audio to text page collects the related workflows.
Which route should you use?
- A short voice note in a supported language, and you just want to read it: WhatsApp's own transcript.
- Your own recording in Voice Memos, on a supported iPhone: the Voice Memos transcript.
- Anything else, anything long, anything you need to search, quote, export or summarise, or any language the built-in routes do not cover: share it to a transcription app. Turning long voice messages into text covers that route for Telegram, Signal and Messages as well.
If you'd rather not maintain this
Frequently asked questions
Can WhatsApp transcribe voice messages on iPhone?
Yes, for a set of languages. Turn on Voice Message Transcripts under WhatsApp Settings > Chats, download the language you need, then touch and hold a voice message and choose Transcribe. The transcript is generated on the phone. If the language is not in WhatsApp's list, share the message to a transcription app instead.
How do I turn a voice memo into text on iPhone?
On supported iPhones and languages, open the recording in Voice Memos and tap the transcript button to see the text on the device. For a memo the app cannot transcribe, or when you need exports, timestamps or a searchable library, share the recording from Voice Memos to a transcription app such as ThinkScribe.
Does transcribing a WhatsApp voice message send the audio anywhere?
WhatsApp's built-in transcripts are generated on the phone after you download a language pack. Voice Memos transcripts are also on-device. If you share the audio to another app, it depends on that app: ThinkScribe runs recognition on the phone and has no cloud service, so the audio stays where it is.
What audio formats can I transcribe on iPhone?
WhatsApp voice notes are typically OGG files and Voice Memos recordings are M4A. ThinkScribe imports MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC and OGG from any app's share sheet, so most audio you receive on an iPhone can be transcribed without converting it first.
