Archived Post

Cool feature of iOS 10: Voicemail transcription (beta)

One thing that is always a lot of fun just after the release of a new operating system version is when you find features that you either didn’t know about or had completely forgotten about. That happened to me today when I received a phone call from an unknown number and promptly ignored it (my usual practice). The caller left a voicemail message, and when I went to listen to it on my iPhone I found that it had been transcribed into text (see image at right).

As you can see, the transcription is far from perfect; for example, the “put it on a company that is Lisa” was actually “put it on a company Visa”, and the entire thing seems to be one big run-on sentence. My Comcast landline does transcriptions, and at this point it’s equally as silly sometimes. But at least Apple has the courtesy to show that a) It’s a “transcription beta” and b) ask for feedback so they can improve the transcription accuracy.

Tap on “useful” or “not useful” at the bottom of the transcription, and you’re offered a chance to send that voicemail to Apple for analysis so the company can make transcription even more useful in the future. 

 

Steve Sande
the authorSteve Sande
Steve is the founder and former publisher of Apple World Today and has authored a number of books about Apple products. He's an avid photographer, an FAA-licensed drone pilot, and a really bad guitarist. Steve and his wife Barb love to travel everywhere!