Audio Messaging Is Great and — Who Knew? — You Can Send Them From Siri
Laura Rosenberg recently put out a great piece at 9to5Mac on the merits of sending audio messages rather than always texting:
That said, wouldn’t it just be easier to send an audio message to whoever texted you rather than sending a riddled response that Siri is sure to get wrong? Something to consider!
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As for my friends and voice messaging, well… those are entirely different relationships than with your siblings, aren’t they? While my friends and I text all the time, I can’t begin to tell you how fun it is to see when they’ve sent me a voice message, and to be clear, I send them constantly — they’re often of me laughing at something that happened or something they’ve said that made me laugh.
I often forget that I can even send audio messages, even though I really like them. As someone who instinctively texts with punctuation and grammar, I’m exactly the person who muddles through voice-to-text with Siri, trying to get everything just right in one go. Sending an audio message would be so much faster, easier, and better.
That’s not to say that Apple’s implementation in iMessage is perfect. Laura has suggestions where they can make improvements:
If my friend sends me an audio on iMessage, all I can do is pause it. What’s worse, if while I’m listening to their audio they then text me, the memo itself stops, and I have to start the whole thing over.
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Lastly, if you want to hear the entirety of a voice memo within iMessage and it’s longer than whatever your screen display length is set to (mine is 30 seconds before my phone goes dark), you need to keep tapping your phone to keep it awake while listening, otherwise, your phone goes dark and then you again have to start over and replay from the beginning.
I’ll leave you with a quick tip. Since I do most of my voice-to-texting initiated from Siri, I wondered if I could send an audio message completely by voice without having to tap through the recording interface in the Messages app. It’s entirely possible! “Hey Siri, send an audio message to {Recipient},” worked like a charm. It does still transcribe the message to text as you record it to Siri, even though that text doesn’t get sent. I guess that’s cool since you know it’s working and hearing you well enough.
(Bonus Tip: Use “Captain” or another title as your nickname in your contact card for some fun when Siri addresses you in responses. 😆)
Laura’s whole piece at 9to5Mac is worth reading.