Transcripts Are the Best New Apple Podcasts Feature in Years.
Apple Podcasts is hardly the best podcast app for your iPhone , but it’s what it comes pre-installed with. For many of us, this means it’s the only podcast app we’ve ever bothered with, which means the more improvements Apple makes to podcasts, the better. Luckily, the company’s latest change, arriving in iOS 17.4 , is actually pretty cool.
In a new iOS update , Apple has added a transcription feature to podcasts . The results are truly impressive: transcripts not only allow you to read along with any podcast episode, but are also automatically available for all new podcasts in the app – as long as the podcast is written in English, French, Spanish or German. This means that in the future, Apple will add transcripts to episodes shortly after they are released. The company says transcripts of older episodes will be added “over time.” Regardless, The Daily has transcripts of every episode up to May 4, 2023, as of this writing.
Anecdotally, I saw transcripts of every podcast I checked for this feature, from extremely popular shows like The Daily to more niche podcasts like Segments . As far as I can tell, the transcripts themselves are accurate. The only problems arise when multiple people are speaking at the same time: the transcript appears to be tied to one voice, and one voice only, meaning you may be missing some context if you rely on the transcript alone.
How to access a transcript on Apple Podcasts
Once you update your iPhone to iOS 17.4 (available on iPhone XS and later), you’ll be greeted by a splash screen advertising the launch of transcripts when you first open podcasts. From here, simply select a podcast and play it. In the podcast player, click the transcript button in the bottom left corner and the transcript will fill the screen.
Transcripts work much the same way as the live lyrics feature in Apple Music. (The buttons are the same.) Apple Podcasts will highlight words in the transcript as the speaker says them, making it easy to follow. The transcript itself is broken down into smaller paragraphs unless it is just a sentence or word. You can click on any of these points in the transcript to jump to that point in the episode.
Use the transcripts to search for any word or phrase in a podcast episode.
You can also search for any word or phrase in the transcript, just like you would in a regular text file. While viewing the transcript, click Search and enter what you want to find.
If you want to share part of the transcript with another app, you can long-press on any section and then select Select Text . This will open the full transcript in another part of the podcasts, where you can copy the selected text or any other part of the transcript. (You can also access this page by clicking the three dots in the top right corner of the player window and selecting View Transcript . You’ll also find a search function here.)