Imagine this: You’re Ethan Hunt. You’ve just paraglided onto a busy New York City street. Your phone beeps. You pull it out of your pocket and fire up WhatsApp – you’ve got one voice note.
You hit play and it says, “This message will self-destruct in five seconds.”
OK, we may have taken this a bit far, but something of the sort will soon be possible on WhatsApp. According to WaBetaInfo, the company is currently rolling out a “view once” mode for voice notes.
It works just as you’d expect: A new “view once” icon is available in the chat bar while recording a voice note. If you tap it, you’ll enable the “view once” mode. As a result, the recipient can only listen to it once. They will also not have the option to export, forward, save, nor record it. Hell, and even you won’t be able to listen to it after you send it.
To see the icon, you’ll have to start recording a voice note with a tap and then pull upwards with your finger to lock into recording mode first.
The feature is currently available for some beta testers on iOS and Android. WaBetaInfo says it will become available to more users over the coming days.
WhatsApp has been on a roll lately. Earlier today, we wrote about a new feature that lets users with two SIM cards log into two WhatsApp accounts at once. A few days ago, WhatsApp launched passkey logins on Android. The company also recently launched a HD setting for sending photos and videos, as well as an AI sticker generator.
