WhatsApp voice message to text

Some voice notes are easier to read than to sit through. Save the note, upload it and read the transcript.

Transcribe a recording

Launching November 2026

Getting a voice note out of WhatsApp

First the note has to become a file. Menus vary by phone and app version, so treat these steps as a guide.

On an iPhone
Press and hold the voice message, tap Forward, then the share icon in the corner. Pick Save to Files, or AirDrop the note to your Mac. It usually arrives as OPUS.
On an Android phone
Press and hold the voice message, tap the three-dot menu and choose Share. Send it to Google Drive or email it to yourself.
From WhatsApp on a computer
In WhatsApp for Windows, Mac or the web, hover over the voice note and open its small menu. Download saves the audio to your computer.
Upload the file to Textspert
Pick the saved note on the upload page. Open the transcript when the file shows Done.

For a whole chat’s worth of notes, Export chat in that chat’s settings bundles the messages and media into one archive. Unzip it and each voice note is its own audio file.

OPUS, OGG and the other files WhatsApp makes

WhatsApp records voice notes with the Opus codec, and the saved file ends in .opus or .ogg depending on the phone. Both upload as they are. Converting a note to MP3 first would only cost a little quality for nothing.

Notes forwarded as documents, audio clips attached from a music app, and video messages work too. A video message is transcribed from its soundtrack, the way video to text handles any clip. Recordings made outside WhatsApp, like iPhone Voice Memos, are covered on voice memo to text.

How many voice notes fit on the Free plan

Free gives you 3 files a day, and each voice note counts as one file however short it is. That’s plenty for the odd long message from a relative. It runs out fast when a project group sends twenty notes before lunch.

For a backlog, an hour pack is the cheaper fix. 5 hours costs $5, and pack hours skip the Free daily limit, so a stack of notes can go up together. Pack time counts the length of each recording, so a hundred one-minute notes use well under 2 hours. The pricing page lists every plan side by side.

Voice notes are personal, so here’s where they go

Family news, a doctor’s message passed along by a friend, a colleague venting about a client. Voice notes tend to be more candid than email. Your audio and transcripts are never sent to any AI company. Speech recognition runs on our own GPUs, and nobody trains a model on your notes.

Delete a note’s transcript once you’ve read it, or let Free files clear themselves after 30 days. The private transcription page covers training and deletion.

Notes in other languages, and group chats

We transcribe 100 languages and detect which one each note uses, useful when a family chat flips between English and Portuguese. A single note that switches halfway may need a fix by hand.

For an English version of a note in another language, Transcribe to English is part of Unlimited (fair use up to 720 hours a month). It keeps the original timestamps, so you can jump back and hear any line in the speaker’s own words.

WhatsApp voice note questions

Can Textspert read voice notes straight from WhatsApp?

No. We don’t connect to WhatsApp or read your chats. You save the note as a file and upload it, so you decide exactly which messages leave your phone.

Do I need to convert the OPUS file to MP3?

No. Upload the .opus or .ogg file just as WhatsApp saved it.

Does a 20-second voice note use a whole file on Free?

Yes. Free counts files, not minutes, so any note uses one of the 3 for that day. Hour packs count minutes instead and skip the daily file limit.

Can I record a voice message into Textspert directly?

Yes. The upload page records from your browser’s microphone, so you can dictate a reply, read it back as text and paste it into the chat.

What if two people talk in one note?

Switch on speaker labels when you upload. Up to 4 voices per file get marked, and you can rename them once you know who is who. More on speaker identification.

More ways to turn phone audio into text

Compare plans on the pricing page, or read our short privacy promises.

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