Can I turn off my iPhone's voicemail transcriptions in iOS 17?

Is there any way we can turn off the captions/transcription on voice messages in messages? no offence but i genuinely hate it but i cant find a way to disable it anywhere and when i search it up, it comes up with voiceMAIL transcriptions which i really don’t want 😭😭. does anyone know an alternative or a way to turn it off?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 11, iOS 17

Posted on Sep 19, 2023 2:28 AM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 6, 2023 12:14 PM

cgrimes87 wrote:

This feature needs a disable option. If I send a voice memo it HANGS FOREVER trying to transcribe before the message is sent. I do not need my received voice memos in text and vice versa. If I did, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN TEXTS ALREADY

Tell Apple:


Product Feedback - Apple

43 replies

Sep 29, 2023 11:15 AM in response to Lindsay_B.

This is the feedback I submitted today, as I am in agreement that we need to be able to disable this feature:

I would like the option to disable the transcription of my voice notes to the people receiving them. First because it slows down my phone. I have to wait for it to transcribe before I can click on any other message. That’s a pain. Second, it is inaccurate at best. Really bad. Third, if I wanted to utilize voice to text, I have that option, but I want my clients to hear the emotion, excitement & inflection in my voice, vs reading it in whatever THEIR current emotional state is. We need to be able to utilize it or disable if we desire. Thank you!

Sep 25, 2023 10:41 PM in response to Lindsay_B.

That is so much complete nonsense! Why do you force things and not even give an option to turn it off???? Like seriously. Sometimes you want the person to hear the audio and they’re just going to be tempted to read the text.


What’s the point of making an audio if you’re going to send a freaking text anyways????


The whole point of audio is to hear my voice. I can voice dictate text if I want to do text messages with my voice. You guys better at this feature to disable ASAP because this is ridiculous!

Sep 21, 2023 1:16 PM in response to diamonds_

Thanks for visiting the Apple Support Communities diamonds_,


Currently, the transcriptions of audio messages in iOS 17 Messages currently cannot be disabled. If that is a setting you would like to see in future releases, we invite you to provide your feedback to the appropriate Apple teams here: Feedback - Messages for iOS and iPadOS - Apple


Have a wonderful day!


Nov 30, 2023 5:50 PM in response to slickem1

The idea was that maybe you are in a situation where it isn’t convenient to listen to a voice message say like in a movie theater or in bed or something but you’d still be able to know what is in the message. In theory I think it’s a handy function and I was waiting for something like this as some other apps have similar functions. However having it always on by default and not being able to turn off, while also being pretty messy at the moment (The messages are frequently full of mistakes) makes it feel a bit half-baked. Another chat app that I use has this function, but it is optional and transcribes the message only if you long-press on the audio message and then the option to transcribe comes up. That way it doesn’t have to be always on or always off. I hope they’ll change it to something like this while also improving the voice recognition in the future.

Sep 26, 2023 6:39 AM in response to KR989

KR989 wrote:

That is so much complete nonsense! Why do you force things and not even give an option to turn it off???? Like seriously. Sometimes you want the person to hear the audio and they’re just going to be tempted to read the text.

So you want to take away the option from the person you're sending to and force them to listen to the audio?

What’s the point of making an audio if you’re going to send a freaking text anyways????

That's a great question. I've never understood why people send an audio message when they could just text me.

Nov 28, 2023 7:31 AM in response to Dralend

Dralend wrote:

We should be able to disable this feature. Transcripts are not fully accurate, e.g. I say 'It's Dan' to my friend who's recently lost her father. The transcript says 'Hello, it's dad'. This is so stupid Apple, and causes hurt. It needs to be fixed urgently.

Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:


Product Feedback - Apple

Can I turn off my iPhone's voicemail transcriptions in iOS 17?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.