WhatsApp improves voice messages: these are the innovations

WhatsApp has introduced and partially introduced a whole series of improvements to voice messages in the past few weeks. All innovations at a glance.

Since WhatsApp introduced voice messages in 2013, they’ve been polarizing: some users like the option to simply talk about the SMS instead of having to painstakingly type it — others hate the message format, which takes longer for the recipient than a typed message, which is also fast .

In the past few weeks, WhatsApp has gradually made a whole series of improvements to voice messages and introduced them again en masse on the company’s blog. The vast majority of users may have gotten the new functionality by now, even if they haven’t noticed it yet.

New jobs at a glance

Overview of the new functions of voice messages on WhatsApp (Source: WhatsApp / Meta)

In fact, some functions should be of particular interest to those who are annoyed by voice messages, as they make it easier to listen to messages and give creators the opportunity to make their messages as concise as possible.

• Play outside chat: If you receive a voice message that is taking 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 displayed as a small information bar at the top of the screen and can be paused or closed at any time. By the way, it continues to run even if I open another app. To terminate the operation prematurely, you have to go back to the WhatsApp application.
• Pause and resume recording: If you are recording a longer voice message, you can pause the recording and continue later. However, this only works if you don’t hold down the microphone icon while recording, but rather push it up. The recording can then be interrupted and continued with the pause icon. You can also listen to the message before sending it and delete it instead of sending it.
• Visualization in wave form: The recording is displayed as a wave – so if there’s been silence in the recording for an extended period of time, you can see it live and jump to the part where it looks like louder noise has been recorded again.
• Replay from last listened position: Anyone who is disturbed while listening to longer messages and has to leave the app in the meantime can continue listening right from where they were last turned off.
• Faster message playback: If the other person does not reach the point in the voice message or speaks very slowly, playback can be accelerated to 1.5 times or twice the speed. All you have to do is tap “1x” at the end of the voice message during playback. This now works with your own voice messages and with forwarded voice messages.

New functions can ensure that voice messages are shorter and less annoying for recipients. Jobs should be publicly available now. Since WhatsApp only allows some functions incrementally, it may take some time in individual cases.

If you do not have any of the functions, you should check if the current version of WhatsApp is installed on your smartphone. To see which smartphones are available, read here (Android / iOS).