WhatsApp audios are more comfortable for the person sending the message, but not for the person receiving it. I have long since found the best solution
Voice messages on WhatsApp, also known simply as ‘WhatsApp audios’, are a tool that is as useful as it is controversial . Sending an audio can be very convenient, since it saves us from having to type the message on the keyboard. However, many times an audio can be annoying or uncomfortable for the person receiving it.
This is because many times the people who send the audios can transform an idea of a few words into a podcast of several minutes , with a message that is not very concise and sometimes full of annoying street noises. I know that many of my contacts hate audios, but I like sending them, so I found the best solution to not bother them. And I didn’t have to install anything on my Android phone.
This is the best way to avoid annoying someone with a WhatsApp voice message
WhatsApp recently launched the transcription of audios to text , a feature that is a before and after for the application. If someone sends me an audio and I can’t listen to it (or I don’t want to), I transcribe it . Many times reading a message is easier than spending a couple of minutes listening to it, either because we don’t have headphones and it’s difficult for us to hear it, or we’re doing something else. Transcription came to save us in these situations.
However, long before this feature existed on WhatsApp, I made the decision to respect my contacts: I don’t want to assume that they are willing to listen to my audios at any time , I prefer to send my messages as text, especially if they are contacts with whom I do not have a relationship of trust. My close friends and family usually tolerate my habit of sending audios, and I am happy to listen to theirs.
The solution to not bother anyone with my audios, but still avoid writing, is voice dictation . Keyboards like Gboard and others available for Android allow you to dictate the text you want to write. This tool works quite well and it is very likely that you already have it available on your mobile.
In WhatsApp, when you open the keyboard in any chat window, you can tap on the microphone and, instead of typing, you can simply dictate to the phone what you want to say . In the screenshots above, you can see how it works on a Samsung phone, but this tool is available on any Android phone that uses Gboard and other keyboards.
And the best thing of all is that this doesn’t just work on WhatsApp , we can use dictation on Telegram, in the native messaging app, and basically in any app that allows you to write text.
The results when dictating a message are really good, and we can edit everything we think is necessary. For example, we can remove incorrect words, in cases where the application cannot understand what we have said, or add question marks and separate some sentences and paragraphs, since the keyboard will copy the entire text as a single paragraph as we dictate.
I also find that dictation, like writing a message, allows me to better condense and develop my ideas , that’s what I want to say. One of the main problems with WhatsApp audio is that we can often ramble, go from one side to the other when trying to say a message and dilute the idea between many eeeehs and mmm s . On the other hand, when dictating the message, I partly feel the pressure of not making the text too long, so I develop my messages better and faster.
Dictation allows me to not have to type, and the person receiving my message to not have to listen to it. It’s, as they say, a win-win situation , and I can’t stop using this tool, with or without transcription available.