WhatsApp’s voice messaging feature will soon get some nifty updates to help compose, send, and listen to those convenient audio messages.
The Meta-owned app is the main mode of communication for over two billion people every month. It’s free, highly accessible, and end-to-end encrypted, making it an important app for users around the globe to connect with family and friends. These updates could enhance the already pretty good voice messaging feature of the app by helping avoid miscommunications in audio messages and helping listeners speed through long-winded conversations.
Included features are:
Out-of-chat playback will let you continue listening to a message after leaving the chat in which you received it.
Play and pause buttons will allow you to pause your recording and resume where you left off.
Waveform visualization will show you how loud a message is, in case you need to prepare by adjusting your volume.
Draft previews will let you listen to a message before sending it.
Remember playback will pick up where you left off if you leave a chat before listening to a message all the way through.
Fast playback will let you speed up any message in case you’re in a time crunch or listening to a long-winded message.
WhatsApp didn’t provide a release date in the announcement or information about which platforms it will arrive on and in what order, but you can expect the features to roll out over the next few weeks.
Analysis: WhatsApp stays on top for a reason
The updates that Meta steadily brings to WhatsApp aren’t anything groundbreaking, and that’s by design. There’s a reason that the app continues to be the most popular global messaging app out there.
Small features brought about in incremental updates maintain the app’s ease of use by not getting in the way of how the app’s two billion monthly active users already interact with it.
With these updates, it looks like the majority of the interface remains the same, and the new draft previews will help users avoid sending messages that weren’t ready yet. It’s the little things that count the most.
