WhatsApp is getting better voice messages in the next few weeks

Higher-speed listening without being tied to a chat

WhatsApp announced on Wednesday that it will roll out some improvements to voice messages over the coming weeks, including the ability to listen to a message while reading other chats and play messages at 1.5 or 2 times speed (yes, please, put this feature everywhere).

The experience of recording messages is also improving. WhatsApp now lets you pause and resume your recording, so you don’t have to leave large gaps of silence if you’re thinking of what to say next or redo a recording if you need to have a brief conversation in real life. You’ll also be able to listen to a message before you send it to make sure you didn’t accidentally get cut off or include something you didn’t want to.

An example of what the new voice chat UI looks like. Image: WhatsApp

There’s also a slight aesthetic improvement. Instead of just using a line to show your voice message playback progress, WhatsApp will now use a waveform of the actual message. Plus, WhatsApp can remember where you were when you paused playback and let you start playing back from that point again so you don’t have to re-listen to an entire message.

These improvements will likely get a lot of use — WhatsApp says that users send an average of 7 billion voice chats a day. While some similar features were already available in other apps (Telegram, for example, has let you listen to messages outside chats for a while), it’s definitely nice to see WhatsApp’s version getting some attention.

WhatsApp is getting better voice messages in the next few weeks