Whatsapp gives the possibility to send audio messages quickly and easily, using the microphone button. These audio messages can therefore be listened to by those who receive them and are very convenient when we are in the car or when we cannot write by hand on the keyboard. However, these voice notes may stop working sometimes, for example if the audio recording stops immediately or if you cannot hear a received message or if you receive an " This audio is not available " error.
So let's see some tricks to send and receive voice messages and then how to solve the problems of sending or listening .
READ ALSO: All the ways to write and send messages on Whatsapp
How Whatsapp voice messages work
To send a voice message on Whatsapp, just press the microphone icon next to the writing field and keep it pressed during recording. The moment you release your finger, the message is sent.If you swipe your finger to the left during recording, you cancel the recording that is no longer sent.
If, however, while recording the voice message, drag your finger upwards on the lock icon, then you can release your finger and continue talking anyway. Once finished, you will have to press the enter key to end and send the voice note.
To listen to a voice message, simply press the Play button. If you want to listen to a voice message not in speakerphone, you can press the Play button of the message and then bring the phone closer to your ear as you would when you are on the phone, immediately the sound of the smartphone speaker is muted and you can listen to the message without making it heard at all.
Whatsapp voice messages can also be sent from a PC, using Whatsapp from a website. In this case, a microphone must be connected to the computer.
Finally, note that the microphone icon when a message is received is colored differently depending on whether the message has been listened to or not: green if it is not listened to, blue if the voice message has been listened to.
Voice messages sent also have the icon colored differently: gray microphone if the message sent has not yet been listened to, blue instead if it has been listened to.
A trick not to let you know that a received voice message has been listened to (and therefore not to make the icon color blue), is to select it and then use the Share button that appears on the top bar. Then choose another application such as Telegram or the app to listen to music to hear it without letting it know. Another way to listen to messages without letting them know is to forward the voice message to another number and listen to it from another smartphone.
All received voice messages can be forwarded to other chats as you would any message or photo.
Send written messages dictating them verbally
A voice message is sent as an audio file that the recipient can listen to from his phone. Whoever sends the message, however, can also choose to send a message dictated by voice so that the recipient does not receive the audio recording, but a normal written message. In this case you write a message as if it were typed by hand from the keyboard, even if it was actually created vocally.To do this we have seen, in another article, how to dictate verbally on Android and iPhone. In general, just open the keyboard used to write and press the microphone button (not the Whatsapp microphone button, but the keyboard button). Just say the message to dictate it in WhatsApp and then press the button to send it as written text.
If you cannot use your hands, for example in the car, you can use Siri's voice commands saying "hey Siri", and then say the words Send WhatsApp message, the recipient's name and finally dictate the message to be written and sent.
On Android, you can dictate a message to Whatsapp using the voice command Ok Google, which is similar to Siri. After activating Ok Google, say " send whatsapp message ", then the recipient's name and message to be written and sent.
For those who receive messages, it is possible, using other apps, to convert Whatsapp voice messages into text to be read, if you do not want to waste time listening to long recordings.
Solve problems with Whatsapp audio messages
As mentioned above, some problems may occur both in sending voice messages and in listening to the received voice messages.If you are unable to send voice messages
If you are unable to send voice messages in Whatsapp, the problem can have three causes:- The phone memory is full and Whatsapp cannot store anything. In this case, consult the guides to free up space on iPhone and free up space on Android.
- Whatsapp does not have the necessary permissions to use the smartphone microphone. In this case the solution is different depending on the phone, whether it is one with an Android system or an iPhone.
On Android, go to Settings on the phone, then to Apps and notifications or Apps or Application manager, search for Whatsapp in the list of all apps, then tap on Permissions and activate the switch next to the Microphone.
On iPhone, open Settings, scroll down and tap WhatsApp, activate the switch next to Microphone or turn it off and then reactivate it.
- There is an active recording app. WhatsApp cannot record voice notes if another call recording or screen recording app is active on the phone and must be disabled or uninstalled.
If you are unable to listen to the received voice messages
- First of all, make sure the volume is high enough if you are listening to the voice notes through the speaker. If you use earphones to listen to them, you need to increase the volume again as it is a different regulator than the speakerphone.- If the phone screen turns black when listening to a voice message, there may be a problem with the proximity sensor. When you want to listen to a voice message in private by putting the phone to your ear, the screen turns off automatically. If this happens even when you try to listen to a hands-free message, there may be a problem with the proximity sensor, that it is covered by a badly placed case or by your finger.
- If the error " this audio cannot be loaded at this time " is displayed, it means that the message is not in the memory because it has been deleted or because the space available on the phone has run out. You must therefore free up memory on your phone to go back to listening to voice messages.
- On Android only, try clearing the cache of the Whatsapp app. Open Android Settings, go to Apps and notifications, then search for Whatsapp in All apps and in the Whatsapp tab, tap the button to clear the cache under the Storage section.
Find the audio files of the Whatsapp voice messages
While we know how to send them and how to listen to them, what we are interested in is knowing where they are saved so we can recover or delete them. The WhatsApp audio notes, in fact, are saved in the mobile phone memory (taking up space), but can only be listened to or deleted within Whatsapp.On both Android and iPhone it is possible to use, for each chat, the Empty Chat button to delete all voice messages within a conversation.
Only on Android, on the other hand, is it possible to delete the voice messages by deleting the audio files. To do this you need to use a file manager for Android. Using, for example, Solid Explorer, the folder to locate to find all the Whatsapp voice messages is: Whatsapp / Media / Whatsapp Voice Notes
In this folder you will find many other folders each named with a number, which is then the year-month date in which the voice messages were saved. Within each of these folders are .opus files, which cannot be listened to as normal audio files. The only way to recognize what these voice notes are is to check the date and then go get them in the chats where they were received. To clean and recover space on every Android smartphone, you can delete all the folders inside Whatsapp Voice Notes .
