WhatsApp on Tuesday announced the rollout of an ability to let you preview your voice messages before sending them to your contacts. The update essentially helps you listen to your voice message and see if the audio is fine for sharing over the instant messaging app. If it’s not, you can discard your voice message and record it again for sharing. The voice message preview feature on WhatsApp works with both individual and group chats. Also, it has been released for all platforms, including Android and iOS as well as Web and desktops.
To use the voice message preview feature on your mobile device, you need to touch the microphone button in a WhatsApp chat and slide it up to lock hands-free recording. This will bring an interface where you will see a stop button and a trash can. You can tap the stop button and then hit the play button to listen to your voice message before sharing it with the recipient. WhatsApp also lets you move to a particular part of the audio by tapping on the seek bar.
If you don’t find the message appropriate for sending, you can delete it by tapping the trash can. You can alternatively send it by hitting the send button.
The addition of the preview feature will be quite helpful if you prefer sending voice messages over their text version on WhatsApp. It allows you to review your voice message draft before sending them to your contacts. You can, however, still accidentally send random voice messages if you are just touching the microphone button on the app and not sliding it up to lock the recording function.
WhatsApp confirmed to Gadgets 360 that the preview feature has been rolled out to all users. We were also able to use it on the latest version of the app across a list of Android and iOS devices as well as on the Web.
In May, WhatsApp was spotted developing the preview feature for voice messages. It was initially seen with dedicated Review and Cancel buttons, as reported by WhatsApp beta tracker WABetaInfo. However, the Meta-owned company has preferred to use the traditional play and trash can buttons over any text references.
It is important to note that while the latest update does allow users to preview voice messages before sending them to their contacts, it does not allow pausing of voice message recordings. This means that you could not pause audio recording of your message and resume it after some time.
Nevertheless, WhatsApp seems to have that function in the works as well. WABetaInfo spotted the pause voice message option in October. It is, though, yet to be available to end users.
For the last few months, WhatsApp has shown an active interest in improving the voice message experience on its platform. The app recently introduced playback speed and waveforms for voice messages. It was also spotted testing features including a global voice message player and transcription of voice messages.