timer
Long Message Transcription Failures
Experiencing issues with transcribing longer voice messages? Here's what you need to know.
What's happening?
You might notice that:
- Only part of a long voice message is transcribed
- The transcription cuts off abruptly mid-sentence
- An error message appears when attempting to transcribe very long messages
- Messages over 5 minutes in length frequently fail to transcribe completely
Why is this happening?
WhatsApp's voice transcription feature has limitations when processing longer audio files. This is due to several factors:
- On-device processing has memory and computational constraints
- Timeouts are built into the system to manage processing load
- Longer audio files require more resources and are more likely to trigger these limits
- The system is optimized for typical message lengths (under 2-3 minutes)
These limitations are particularly noticeable on older devices or those with less available memory.
What can you do?
- Try to keep voice messages under 5 minutes when possible
- Break longer messages into multiple shorter segments
- Make sure your device has sufficient free memory before attempting long transcriptions
- Consider listening to the original audio if the transcription fails
lightbulb
Need to transcribe longer messages?
Our Transcriber for WhatsApp service can handle voice messages of any length, with no 5-minute limitation, providing complete transcripts even for your longest conversations.