WhatsApp enables, disables and tinkers with voice waveforms feature

The beta versions of any app are home to endless changes, and this is most certainly true of WhatsApp. The app's developers are among the busiest in the business, adding and tweaking features at a rate that's rarely seen elsewhere.

Recently, there has been a lot focused on multi-device support, but there is plenty of other work going on at the same time. One of the latest features that's being worked on is voice waveforms, and there has been a flurry of activity in this area over the last few days.

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A beta version of WhatsApp for Android was released towards the end of last week that included a new voice form feature. Borrowing an idea from Instagram – and, indeed, other apps – when you record and send an audio message to a contact, you're able to see a waveform of the message as it plays back.

Or at least this was the case. The feature only popped up very briefly before being yanked from a subsequent beta version of the app. In fact, voice waveforms only stuck around for around a day, but this does not mean that WhatsApp has given up on the idea.

Voice visuals

The appearance and disappearance of the feature is really just part of the testing process. Even when voice waveforms vanished over the weekend, it was known that it will be returning and expanding through the WhatsApp app.

What does the future hold for voice waveforms? Not only is the feature going to be spreading from Android to iOS as well, it will also gain additional elements. In addition to displaying voice waveforms during message playback, the same visual effect will be shown in real time during recording.

It's not yet clear quite when the feature will make it out of beta, but hopefully it won't be too long.

Via WABetaInfo