WhatsApp has presented and partially introduced a whole series of improvements for voice messages in the past few weeks. All innovations at a glance.
Since WhatsApp introduced voice messages in 2013, they have been polarizing: some users love the option of simply recording short messages instead of having to laboriously type them in – others hate the message format, which is more time-consuming for the recipient than a typed message, which also quickly changes skim.
In the past few weeks, WhatsApp has gradually made a whole series of improvements to voice messages and presented them again collectively on the company blog. The vast majority of users have probably gotten to the new functions by now, even if they may not have noticed them yet.
The new functions at a glance
Overview of the new functions for voice messages on WhatsApp. (Source: WhatsApp / Meta)
In fact, some of the functions should be of particular interest to those who have been annoyed by voice messages, because they make it easier to listen to the messages and offer the creators the opportunity to make their messages as brief as possible.
- Playback outside of chat: If you receive a voice message that takes longer, you can now leave the chat while listening and switch to another chat partner and continue reading there at the same time. The current voice message is then shown as a small info bar at the top of the screen and can be paused or closed there at any time. By the way, playback continues even if you open another app. In order to end the playback prematurely, however, you have to return to the WhatsApp app.
- Pause and resume recording: If you are recording a longer voice message, you can pause the recording in between and then continue later. However, this only works if you not only hold down the microphone symbol during recording, but push it upwards. The recording can then be interrupted and continued using the pause symbol. You can also listen to the message before sending it and delete it instead of sending it.
- Visualization in waveform: The recording is displayed as a waveform – so if there is silence in the recording for a long period of time, you can see it directly and jump to the part where louder noises were apparently recorded again.
- Playback from last heard position: Anyone who is disturbed while listening to longer messages and has to leave the app in the meantime can continue listening directly from where playback was last stopped.
- Faster message playback: If the other person does not get to the point in the voice message or speaks very slowly, the playback can be accelerated to 1.5 times or twice the speed. All you have to do is tap the “1x” at the end of the voice message during playback. This now works with your own and with forwarded voice messages.
The new functions can actually ensure that voice messages are shorter and less annoying for the recipients. The functions should be generally available by now. Since WhatsApp is only making some functions available gradually, it may take some time in individual cases.
If you don’t have any of the functions, you should check whether the current WhatsApp version is installed on your smartphone. For which smartphones this is available, read here (Android / iOS).
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