Following the addition of in-app translation for 19 languages and their variations on Android, WhatsApp is now rolling out this feature for iPhone users. According to WABetaInfo, people running the latest WhatsApp version on iOS might start seeing this feature already.
With that, WhatsApp keeps improving universal communication, as this has been an important push for Apple with iOS 26. With September’s big update, the company started offering built-in Live Translation for FaceTime, iMessage, and calls. While Apple’s translation capabilities are still limited to a few languages, WhatsApp is offering 19.
Most interestingly, the company is using Apple’s Translation API introduced in iOS 17.4, which means WhatsApp doesn’t access your messages. That said, everything you ask the messaging app to translate is handled on-device, ensuring your messages remain end-to-end encrypted. Here’s all the new languages available for translation on WhatsApp for iPhone and how you can discover if you have access to this functionality already.
How to use WhatsApp’s new in-app translation feature
WhatsApp’s new in-app translation feature is available for the following languages and their variations: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified), Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional), Dutch, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
To use this feature, make sure you’re running the latest version of WhatsApp for iOS. Then, go to a message you want to translate and follow the steps below:
- Press and hold the message.
- Tap ‘More’ and see if you can find the Translate option.
- If it’s there, tap it, then select the language you want to translate the message to.
- Download the language packs you may use frequently.
It’s important to note that this is the best way to translate messages from WhatsApp, as Meta blocks several of Apple’s built-in features. For example, to this day, Mark Zuckerberg’s company still doesn’t offer support for Apple Intelligence, so if you want to summarize, proofread, or rewrite a message, you need to ask Meta AI.