WhatsApp is expanding its Discord-like voice chat feature so that group chats of all sizes can communicate with each other in real time. Unlike group calls, which have been on the app for years, real-time “audio hangouts” are more of a feature that doesn’t call every single person in the chat.
Voice chats also offer a bit more flexibility than traditional calls, as the interface doesn’t take up the entire screen. This means you can keep an eye on new messages in a chat or keep an eye on incoming notifications.
Meta first introduced the feature in 2023, but for some reason limited it to large groups of 32 to 256 participants, which is probably a lot larger than the average group thread on the app. Now, WhatsApp users can create audio hangouts in both small group chats and larger ones. WhatsApp supports groups of up to 1024 members, which sounds extremely chaotic even for text messages, let alone audio.