WhatsApp supercharges voice message support

Since y'all apparently don't realize how good simple texts were

Messaging can feel so impersonal these days, no matter how many laughing-crying emoji you attach to your note. Voice messages can bring you and your friends closer, forming a sort of asynchronous phone call perfect for one-on-one and group chats alike. WhatsApp has been beta testing plenty of enhancements to voice messages, and in the coming weeks, all users will finally get to experience these changes for themselves.

Announced today as part of a complete overhaul to voice messaging, WhatsApp is finally treating these recordings like the audio files they ought to be. The company is bringing six major improvements to the app, and it sounds like each of them will make the overall experience a whole lot better.

By far, the most useful change here is out of chat playback, which allows you to leave a thread while a message continues in the background. No more waiting for your friends to finish droning on to check on that text from your boss — now you can finally do both simultaneously. And if that's not good enough, 1.5x and 2x playback speeds make it a cinch to get through endless clips.

WhatsApp has also made recording messages a lot more user-friendly, adding the option to pause and resume messages as you speak. Previews are also here, letting you listen back to your own voice before you send it off to a friend or colleague. And while waveform visualization might not sound like a necessary addition for such a simple tool, seeing how loud or quiet your current recording environment is should help you produce better audio.

The company says seven billion voice messages are sent on the platform each day, making these improvements all the more important to boost communication between users. Enhanced voice messages don't have a specific date for when they'll reach users, but WhatsApp says these updates will roll out sometime in the next few weeks.