What if you never had to listen to an unintelligible voicemail message again?

Coming soon to WhatsApp on iOS: Automatic transcription of voice messages. This converts incoming messages from your friends and family into text, so you can scan them and skip straight to the important bits.

For example, trying to set up a dinner date with a friend? With a transcribed voice message, you can jump straight to the reservation time and skip the parts about how another friend’s cousin visited the same restaurant that one time, and “…wait, I’m about to go into a tunnel. Okay, I’ll be right back.”

"The recipients of voice messages on WhatsApp will benefit the most from this feature. They no longer have to play the audio messages out loud in public or save them for later. They can easily access the information in the voice messages at any time without worrying about the public eavesdropping," network engineer Eric McGee told Lifewire via email.