If you want to listen to a podcast on your commute, but forgot your headphones, you’re out of luck. Or, at least, you used to be: Spotify is rolling out a new feature that auto-generates and syncs podcast transcriptions with “millions” of episodes, so you can read along as you listen, or stay tuned in without the audio.
Not only does this feature make podcasts on the platform more accessible to users, it also makes it easier to engage with an episode at any time: It’s great for those times you can’t listen out loud, but also acts as an excellent tool to scroll and skip around without needing to listen to an episode in its entirety, or guess at where to start.
How to view podcast transcripts on Spotify
To view the transcript of an episode, simply pull up the Now Playing view, scroll down to the “read along” card, and tap to pull up the text full screen. Transcripts are time-synced to the audio, so you’ll see the captions as they come in live.
Spotify is starting to roll out the new transcription feature to users on both free and premium plans, so you should be able to access it in the coming weeks. At some point in the future, podcast creators will also be able to add media to transcripts so users can view an image alongside its description, for example.
In addition to episode transcription, Spotify is expanding its podcast chapters feature so all mobile app users can see a full, time-stamped chapter list from the Now Playing view. With it, you get a more detailed preview of an episode’s contents and can choose which segment to start listening to. Show pages will also contain more details, such as descriptions, images, and episode recommendations.