A lot of people are asking, “How do you use voicemail transcription on the iPhone?” The feature itself is pretty easy to use, but it can be a little glitchy. We’ll go over everything you should know about how to use voicemail transcriptions on your iPhone and what to do if voicemail transcription is not working on your iPhone. Here’s how to use the voicemail-to-text feature of Visual Voicemail on your iPhone.
Jump To:
- What Is Voicemail-to-Text on the iPhone?
- How to Turn On Voicemail Transcription on Your iPhone
- How to Turn Off Voicemail Transcription
What Is Voicemail-to-Text on the iPhone?
We’ve already gone over how to set up voicemail on your iPhone, so now it’s time to learn how to use iPhone voicemail transcription. The voicemail-to-text feature on Apple’s iPhone takes voicemail and transcribes it, so you can easily read phone messages.
iPhone voicemail transcription allows you to read a transcription of the voicemail sent to you. Once read, you can listen to the voicemail if you feel like the transcription missed a piece of information. You can also let Apple know whether or not the voicemail transcription was useful.
Voicemail-to-text on iPhone is a default feature that works on devices running at least iOS 10. However, if you own an iPhone 6 or earlier, voicemail transcription will not work on your device. It does, however, work on iPhone 6S, iPhone SE, and all newer models, including the iPhone 14.
Many people also want to know how to turn voicemail transcription off. While there’s not a straight-forward way to turn voicemail transcription off, there is a clever workaround that we’ll go over below. To learn more about the Phone app and other iPhone apps, sign up for our Tip of the Day newsletter.
How to Turn On Voicemail Transcription on iPhone
Note: It’s important to note that your carrier must support Voicemail Transcription in order for this feature to work, regardless of the iPhone you have. If you’re not sure whether or not your carrier supports Voicemail Transcription, check here.
Now, let’s learn how to turn on voicemail transcription on your iPhone:
- Open the Phone app.
- Tap Voicemail at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap the voicemail you want to read.
- You’ll see a paragraph of text above the voicemail play button. That’s the voicemail transcription. To listen to the voicemail after reading the transcription, tap the Play button.
The voicemail transcription may not be perfect, but it gives you an overall idea of what the person was talking about and whether or not they’re a telemarketer. Once you’ve read the voicemail transcription, you can choose to listen to the voicemail or simply delete it. Also, check out our article on how to hide iMessages on your iPhone.
How to Turn Off Voicemail Transcription
While some people enjoy using voicemail transcription, others might view the feature as annoying. The transcriptions may fill up the voicemail screen, making it hard to move to the next voicemail. Then, the transcription often doesn’t match what the voicemail is actually saying due to low transcribing accuracy. With the help of Siri, you can disable the voicemail transcription feature on your iPhone.
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap on Siri & Search.
- Tap on Language.
- Change Siri language to Australian English or Indian English. If that doesn’t work, choose another language entirely, such as Italian or Japanese.
- Tap Change Language.
This may seem like a strange workaround, but now when you check your voicemail, you should see that the messages no longer include voicemail transcriptions. Now that you know how to set up and use voicemail transcription, you can also read our article about ways you can help protect your iPhone from hackers.
