WhatsApp will soon make it easier for users to record long voice notes

WhatsApp, which has a global playback feature for voice notes on the iOS app already, is all set to roll it out more widely soon. Made available to iOS users first, like many of its other features, the global voice note player is currently available to some beta testers on Android and is on the cards to be made official eventually.

So, how does the global voice note feature work? Put simply, it allows the voice note to play in the background while you carry on reading and replying to other texts. Earlier, if you received a voice note from a contact on WhatsApp, you would have to remain on the same chat window till you finished listening to the note. If you closed the window, the note would stop playing too.

While that is a tad cumbersome, it doesn’t matter much for very short voice notes that maybe last a minute or less. However, for lengthy voice notes, it is a nightmare. A long discourse would pretty much render the app useless for all other purposes till you were done listening to it.

The global voice note player resolves that by allowing you to play the note in the background. You can close the chat window where the note was sent and it will keep playing in the background while you go ahead and read and reply to other texts in the app.

As WABetaInfo has revealed, the global voice note tool appears as a player bar on top of the app to help you navigate through it and the rest of the chats appear normally below that. This keeps the voice memo, or any other audio file you have received, free of the chats and playing in the background without interruptions.

As Android Police rightly points out, “communication isn't free from multitasking — especially on a phone, where messaging is asynchronous — so it's great to see WhatsApp finally improve how it handles voice clips on its app”.

The new voice note tool was a part of WhatsApp beta 2.22.7.21, but it was not available to all beta testers. Only some accounts got access to it. So, if you are a beta tester and you haven’t seen the feature yet on your Android device, you might have to wait a little longer. And eventually, the tool should officially roll out to all users.

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