Voice note or voice message is a handy little feature on WhatsApp for times when you’d rather communicate using speech than texts. Apart from adding a personal touch to messages, it is a great convenience feature. While most are aware of its existence, not many know that these voice messages can be played through the phone’s earpiece instead of the speaker.
As a reader, you might wonder, ‘why do I care?’. Simply put, the feature now allows users to listen to voice clips discreetly as if one were on a call with the other person.
How does the feature work?
Upon receiving or sending a voice note, simply lifting the phone while the clip is being played will divert audio to the earpiece from the speaker. Users may test the feature for themselves by lifting the phone after clicking on the play button. The feature does not require an update to work and has been inherently present for quite some time.
In addition, facilitating the use of voice notes is the record lock button. Instead of holding onto the record button, users may simply click and drag the button to the top for the lock. WhatsApp also now lets you listen to your voice messages before sending them. The feature is currently available in the beta version 2.18.123 and will be introduced into the stable build soon.
Voice clips are automatically saved when there is an interruption while recording a message. The feature comes in handy when users are particularly sending lengthy voice notes and an interruption may cause the entire recording to be deleted. To address the issues, WhatsApp is testing the voice notes save feature.
