New WhatsApp Update: “Voice Recording” gets better with these six new features

WhatsApp has announced six new features that it claims will make the voice message experience on the app better. The “Voice Messaging” feature which first launched in 2013, will see new improvements and WhatsApp notes they are rolling out in the coming weeks.

Among these changes is the ability to listen to a voice “note” while reading other chats and play messages at 1.5 or 2 times speed. This, it termed Out of Chat Playback.

As part of the announcement, WhatsApp says when users are recording a voice message, they can now pause the recording and resume when ready, in case there’s any interruption. Messages can also be previewed before being sent to ensure that nothing was mistakenly left out or something was included that you didn’t intend to include.

The Instant Messaging platform is also introducing something it termed, “Waveform Visualization“. To describe this, WhatsApp says it shows a visual representation of the sound on the voice message to help follow the recording. It is employing a waveform (as you can see below) to illustrate the progress of your voice message playback instead of a simple line. You don’t have to re-listen to a full message because WhatsApp remembers where you were when you paused playback and lets you resume listening from that point.

Then there’s “Remember Playback“, which WhatsApp notes, “If you pause when listening to a voice message, you can pick up where you left off when you return to the chat.”

WhatsApp claims that its users send an average of 7 billion voice chats every day, so these new features are sure to be in high demand. It’s wonderful to see WhatsApp’s version of these features getting some attention, even if similar features were already available in other apps (Telegram, for example, has long let you listen to messages outside of chats).