WhatsApp Announces Big Updates for Voice Messages

WhatsApp will soon start rolling out several new features for voice messages, including the ability to pause and resume recording. Voice messages have been available on WhatsApp since 2013 and they’ve become a really popular feature, especially for people using languages where the typing process is not nearly as simple as in English.

“Every day on WhatsApp, our users send 7 billion voice messages on average, all of which are protected by end-to-end encryption to keep them private and secure at all times,” the Meta subsidiary announced today. While WhatsApp had made voice messages as easy to use as possible until now, the company is getting ready to roll out the following updates:

Pause/Resume Recording: This was probably a much-requested feature, but users will finally be able to hit pause while recording a message to finish it later.

Draft Preview: WhatsApp users will also be able to listen to their voice messages before sending them.

Waveform Visualization: Users recording a voice message will see a visual representation of the sound highlighting silences, quiet and loud moments.

Out of Chat Playback: This feature will allow WhatsApp users to multitask and go outside of the chat while listening to a voice chat.

Remember Playback: After hitting pause while listening to a voice message, users will be able to pick up where they left off when they return to the chat.

Fast Playback on Forwarded Messages: To listen to voice messages faster, WhatsApp users will be able to play them at 1.5x or 2x speeds.

These six new features will roll out to all WhatsApp users “in the coming weeks,” WhatsApp said today. If you’re one of the two billion WhatsApp users around the world, let us know in the comments if these improvements will make you use voice messages more.