WhatsApp voice notes are great for quick communication. At the press of a button, you can quickly switch from typing text messages to using your voice to send messages. This especially helps when you want to get a point across quickly, or in a manner requiring more detail or emotion that the plain text messages simply cannot offer.
However, having someone close to you send you a voice note when out in public can be pretty anxiety-inducing. This especially comes into effect when you don’t have a pair of headphones connected. The WhatsApp voice note you just received maybe something personal that you don’t want everyone around you in the subway. Or it may be something downright embarrassing you’d rather keep to yourself.
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During such a situation, most people either ignore the WhatsApp voice note or scramble to find the closest earphones they can get their hands on. However, WhatsApp offers a neat little feature to get past this situation pretty easily and very conveniently. The best part is you can listen to WhatsApp voice notes discreetly without requiring an external audio device like your earphones or headphones. This feature uses the earpiece that is already there on your phone.
How to listen to WhatsApp Voice Notes
Step 1: Open WhatsApp
Open up WhatsApp on your phone and head to the chatbox where the voice note that you want to listen to is.
Step 2: Hit play and place the phone on your ear
Hit play on the voice note and immediately place your phone on your ear as if you were on a call. Assuming the proximity sensor on your smartphone is working fine, WhatsApp will detect that you have held the phone up against your ear and instead of playing the audio on the phone’s speaker, it will play only on the earpiece, allowing only you to listen to the audio.
Note that even if you bring down the phone back in your hands the audio which still may be playing will not automatically switch back to the speaker. Instead, it will pause at the exact moment when you took the phone away from your ear. This ensures that people around you don’t listen to your WhatsApp voice note even if you pull your phone down in the middle of playing it back.