Turn a Telegram voice message into text

In a lot of chats, Telegram voice messages are how people actually talk – long ones, several in a row, in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or Turkish. Reading one instead of playing it takes a share and a short wait while the phone works. Kaseta transcribes it on the iPhone, in 99 languages, with no account and nothing uploaded.

That second part matters more than it looks. A voice message is someone else’s voice, sent to you in a private chat, and where it goes to become text is a decision you are making about their recording. On-device transcription is the version where it goes nowhere.

Try Telegram’s own button first

If you have Telegram Premium, every voice message has a button that turns it into text, with no limit. Without Premium, Telegram lets you try it on a small number of short messages a week. Either way the transcription runs on Telegram’s side, not on your phone: Telegram’s privacy policy says it may use Google to convert the audio, and that Google does not log the audio or the text.

If you have Premium and that route is fine for the message in front of you, the button is the whole answer, and quicker than anything on this page. Kaseta is for what it leaves out: no Premium and more messages than the weekly trial covers, a recording you would rather not send through anyone’s server, a long voice message you want as a file with timecodes, or audio that arrived somewhere other than Telegram.

What happens to the file

A Telegram voice message is an Ogg file with Opus audio, and Kaseta takes it as it is – no converting, no renaming. The share sheet carries one file at a time, so share one voice message per trip. It confirms straight away that the file is saved to Kaseta; the app picks it up the next time you open it, and the recording appears in the library under the date and time of the import.

Transcription runs while Kaseta is on screen. Leave the app and the work pauses, and the app tells you so; most voice messages are short enough that you will not get the chance. If a file cannot be read, the library says that some imported files could not be added, rather than losing them quietly.

On the free plan you get the text of the first 5 minutes of each recording, which is the whole of nearly every voice message, and the audio is kept in full. Pro removes the limit.

Telegram moves menu items between versions. If Select or the share icon is not where this page says, look for the iOS share sheet – the panel with a row of app icons – rather than Telegram’s own list of chats.

When something else is the better tool

• You have Premium and the server route is fine. The button on the voice message is quicker than any app.
• You are on Android or a computer. Kaseta is an iPhone app, and that settles it.
• You only need the gist. Play it at double speed with Telegram’s speed button. Genuinely faster than installing anything.

The same route for WhatsApp is on the WhatsApp page, recordings you make yourself are covered in the voice memo guide, and the homepage has the short version of how the app works.