Apple Podcasts Will Provide Automatic Transcripts on iOS 17.4

Apple’s Podcasts app on iOS is adding support for automated transcripts, which will appear automatically after a new episode of a podcast is published. The feature will come this spring with iOS 17.4, which will also bring big changes to the platform and the App Store for EU users.

“With transcripts, your audience can read the full text of an episode, search the episode for a specific word or phrase, and tap the text to play from that point in the episode. As an episode plays, each word is highlighted, making it easy to follow along,” Apple explained on its portal for podcast creators.

Apple will provide automated transcripts for podcasts in English, French, German, and Spanish, with back catalog episodes being added over time. Podcast creators will also be able to provide their own transcripts through RSS or upload them in Apple Podcast Connect. They will also be able to set custom transcript settings for specific episodes.

If displaying transcripts on podcasts is a good thing to make this type of content more accessible, Apple isn’t the first company to do this. Last fall, Spotify also made auto-generated transcripts available for millions of podcast episodes, and the company also said that it’s planning to let podcast creators add media transcripts.