WhatsApp has announced a new way to interact with a large group of people through voice chat. Although you can already create a group voice call with up to 32 people, it could be irritating to some people who can't join the voice group call. The new way works a little differently than group voice calls.
Once you start a group voice chat, it will send a notification to every member of the group. If they are busy, they can ignore it easily as the phone doesn't keep ringing continuously. Once inside a group voice chat, there is a bubble that people can join. Once the voice chat is active, call controls (muting voice chat or ending it) will be accessible from the top of the chat. Others who can't join the voice chat in the group can continue to send and see text messages.
These new group voice chats can be participated by up to 32 people. All the messages are end-to-end encrypted, similar to all other messages in WhatsApp. Voice chats will start rolling out to Android and iOS smartphones within the next few weeks. The rollout for larger groups (33 people to 128 people) will begin first, but not everyone will be able to join voice chats at the same time.
Groups with 32 or fewer people haven't received the new feature yet because they can use WhatsApp's existing group voice calls feature. However, they will also get the new feature in the future. The group voice chats feature was leaked earlier when it was under testing through WABetaInfo.
