As teased in January, with the release of iOS 17.4, Apple's Podcasts app now supports podcast transcripts. This is a pretty big advancement in terms of access to podcast content and making podcasts accessible to audiences who can't listen.
The way Apple has implemented transcription is very clever. Everything happens on the cloud. The moment Apple detects that a new episode has arrived, it adds it to the transcription queue and immediately generates a complete transcription. (This is why you won't receive a transcript if you start listening to the episode the moment it starts, but you should see it shortly thereafter.) Supports transcripts. 80% of all listens are on Apple Podcasts.
Not only does Apple run podcasts through a standard transcription engine like the one I use to generate transcripts on my Mac, but it also provides detailed information about how podcasts are structured. It is built to detect.
This is important. That's because many modern podcasts use something called dynamic ad insertion to insert different ads depending on where you are, who you are, and when you download the episode. If your ad's timecode keeps changing, traditional transcript files won't be able to stay in sync with your podcast. Apple's engine detects the beginning and end of these ads and adjusts the transcript accordingly, creating filler animations (the slow fill-in familiar to Apple Music lyrics users) until the podcast content resumes. 3 dots). The transcript should be featured in the appropriate place.
Apple's process detects content down to the word, so it can highlight every word in a spoken transcript (again, in Apple Music style). It detects speaker changes and separates paragraphs to improve readability, but it does not allow you to identify the speaker. Episodes with chapter markers will show what is reflected as a subheading in the transcript.
You can also select and share paragraphs from your transcript (including a link to the podcast), or view the entire podcast transcript by itself without playing the audio.
Podcasters who want to use their own transcripts find this happening with podcasts that have very specific spellings and terminology that they want to get exactly right. <podcast:transcript> Use the Podcast RSS field to specify a subtitle file in SRT or VTT format. Apple's backend system takes that file, runs it through its own special process, and serves it in the same interface.
The only thing it's really missing is support for private podcast feeds. These days, most members-only versions of podcasts support this feed. (Full disclosure: I produce Several We understand that members-only podcasts have some complex technical issues. Technically, each podcast is unique for each member, which is what makes it so complex. But between downloading files, there are some problems: Using the URL and transcript file URL, Apple should be able to group all members-only podcast episodes together. If you would like to transcribe those episodes themselves, you are welcome to do so, but I am also happy to provide my own transcriptions. We don't want our members to miss out on this really cool new feature.
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