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WhatsApp voice messages to get new features in the coming weeks

TechED AfricaApril 2, 20222 Mins read300

WhatsApp is a very crucial means of communication in today’s society where social media is key and part of that is because it is a way to get away from the old methods of sending SMS. Whatsapp allows you to communicate via data or WiFi. Of recent, voice messages have been the trend that makes it a lot easier to communicate than typing a whole message. As per Meta, at least 7 billion voice messages are sent on WhatsApp daily.

Since it is a key element to WhatsApp users, Meta which is the mother company of WhatsApp is bringing some new features to the platform to help make sending and receiving voice messages easier, including listening to a voice message outside of the chat, pausing and resuming recordings, and waveforms to help follow the recording.

When we first launched voice messaging on WhatsApp in 2013, we knew that it could change the way people communicate. By keeping the design simple, we’ve made recording and sending a voice message as quick and easy as writing a text. On WhatsApp, 7 billion voice messages are sent daily on average, all of which are protected by end-to-end encryption to keep them private and secure at all times.

What’s new?

Out of Chat Playback: Listen to a voice message outside of the chat so you can multitask or read and respond to other messages.
Pause/Resume Recording: When recording a voice message, you can now pause the recording and resume when ready, in case you’re interrupted or need to gather your thoughts.

Waveform Visualization: Shows a visual representation of the sound on the voice message to help follow the recording.
Draft Preview: Listen to your voice messages before sending them.
Remember Playback: If you pause when listening to a voice message, you can pick up where you left off when you return to the chat.
Fast Playback on Forwarded Messages: Play voice messages at 1.5x or 2x speeds to listen to messages faster on both regular and forwarded messages.

The features will be rolling out soon to everyone but so far beta testers have already received the update for testing.

More features outside of voice messages are the ability to react to chats sent to you. This has been in beta testing for a while now and is a feature I enjoy the most. It’s not perfect in terms of emojis offered and I hope WhatsApp will add more options soon.