How To Transcribe Voicemails With iOS 10

In the last week Apple has rolled out the new iOS 10 platform that's giving people a lot of #feels. Better, more interactive messaging, bigger emoji icons, and an ability to delete apps that you never could before. But what people are really talking about is how to transcribe voicemails with iOS 10, because that's now a possibility, you guys! The future is here and it's letting you read your voicemails.

Like a lot of people out there, I don't always have enough time to listen to my voicemails. Maybe I'm in a meeting or I'm talking to someone else on the phone. Whatever the reason, having a feature that's going to write out in a message the contents of my voicemails makes me really happy. Now I don't have to awkwardly excuse myself from a situation in order to listen to a five minute recording from my grandmother telling me about her foot issues. I can just read it! (And obviously call her back in half an hour.)

Keep in mind, voice transcription is not 100 percent accurate. As with any technology that has to do with voice recognition, some things get lost in translation. But rest assured, the feature works well enough for the reader to get the gist of what the voicemail contains and respond accordingly. You can even share the text of your voicemail with other people. No more chain phone calls with your entire family — they can now all just read your voicemails!

So how do you get this onto your phone? First you have to make sure that your phone carrier allows voice transcription on you phone. Then it becomes a awaiting game as the creators roll this feature out to all of us. If you want to check whether or not you have it, the steps are pretty simple! First you will have to hit your Phone app icon.

Then you will want to select your voicemail icon.

If you click on any of them, a transcription should appear, writing out the contents of that particular voicemail. To read it, you will just simply click on the voicemail you want, and the transcription appears below. Here's an example where we tested out leaving a voicemail with the first line from Harry Potter.

The next cool thing about voicemail transcription is that you can use the download button to share it with your friends and family. You might wonder why on earth you'd want to do that — in my case it would just be for comedic purposes. Whatever your reason, to share the transcription you can just copy the entire message or particular section and paste it in another text message. Or you can just select the share button from the option menu.

Images: Dasha Fayvinova; Pexels