WhatsApp voice messages get a series of new features

WhatsApp on Wednesday announced a series of updates for voice messages to make it easier for people to communicate with their contacts on the platform using voice notes.

The updates include new voice features that make it more flexible to listen to messages and to reply back. It's out-of-chat playback will let you hit play on a message and keep it playing while you multitask or text other people

It also has features with the ability to pause and resume voice message recordings, waveform visualisation, and draft preview that were already available to some users.

WhatsApp also introduced a remember playback feature as fast playback on forwarded voice messages.

WhatsApp has also added the ability to pause and resume voice messages that lets you gather your thoughts or just restart your recording in case you're interrupted once. It was rolled out to some users on the iPhone in January and was spotted in beta testing for Android and desktop users in recently.

The next major introduction to voice messages on WhatsApp is waveform visualisation. It brings a visual representation of the sound on the voice message to help users follow the recording. The visualisation also appears when you're listening to voice messages you have received from your contacts..

Just like the other features, WhatsApp had been testing waveform visualisation with beta testers on Android and iOS for the last few months.

Users will also be able to play voice messages at 1.5x or 2x speeds to listen to messages faster. This now applies to both regular and forwarded messages.

WhatsApp is rolling out the new features for voice messages to all users in the coming week.