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WhatsApp Now Lets You Start Voice Chat For Groups Of All Sizes: Here's What It Means

WhatsApp Now Lets You Start Voice Chat For Groups Of All Sizes: Here's What It Means

News1823-05-2025
Last Updated:
WhatsApp Group voice chats have been available but only if you have many members, now that feature is open to all group sizes.
WhatsApp Groups have supported voice chats as long as there are plenty of members in it but now the messaging app is removing those limits and making it available for the smaller groups as well.
Voice chats were a fad with apps like Clubhouse raking the mileage for a brief time and now WhatsApp is offering the feature to a wider audience. WhatsApp is bringing the new Group feature to both Android and iOS users over the coming days.
WhatsApp Voice Chat For Small Groups: How It Works
WhatsApp is calling the new update a new audio hangout, as it effectively let's small group of members on the messaging app start a voice conversation similar to a personal podcast.
WhatsApp also mentions that starting a voice chat will not notify or ring anyone (the user) which makes it easy to join or leave the hangout whenever they want to.
advetisement
The platform is also keeping the voice chat pinned to the bottom of your chat so you can easily access call controls, while new members can join when they want and see who else has already. The update brings features that X Space and Clubhouse have offered with their respective platforms, now coming to WhatsApp.
So how can you start these voice chats in WhatsApp Group? You just have to go to the bottom of your chat, swipe up from the chat box and hold it for a few seconds to activate the voice chat in the group.
We got to try out the feature on WhatsApp running on our Android phone and it is already working for groups with 3 members, and you can start a voice chat easily by following the steps mentioned here.
Why Now?
WhatsApp doesn't say why it needed this feature rolling out now but it does assure that like all the chats, calls and media files, the voice chats are also protected by end-to-end encryption by default.
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