WhatsApp could get a new voice message flow that will allow pauses and more

WhatsApp logo (Image credit: Harish Jonnalagadda / iMore)

What you need to know

WhatsApp is now testing a change in the way WhatsApp voice recordings work.
Users can pause their recording and listen back to it before sending.

WhatsApp is working on a change to the way people record voice messages, with users now able to pause their recordings and listen back to it before sending. Currently, neither of those features are available.

The new change is part of the latest iPhone WhatsApp beta and was reported by WABetaInfo.

In its current form, the feature will display a real-time waveform as the person records their message. This comes as WhatsApp also works to use a waveform to replace the existing progress bar, too.

As you know, waveforms will replace the seek progress bar, but that's not all: WhatsApp is developing another feature that uses voice waveforms!The feature has been spotted in a future WhatsApp update ...

Users can pause the recording and listen back to it before sending the finished version to its recipient as well.

While this feature change is part of the closed TestFlight build right now it's likely it will be rolled out to everyone eventually. There is no telling when that will be, however, and WhatsApp can sometimes take longer than you might expect to take a feature from beta to production versions of its app.

While few would suggest WhatsApp is one of the best iPhone apps in the App Store, it has seen improvements in recent months and there seems to be roadmaps of changes still to come, too. I'll take that over an app that never gets updates any time.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.