Twitter's Latest iOS Feature Test Lets Users Share Audio Clips

Twitter has announced a new feature that gives users the option of sharing short audio clips in addition to text, videos, GIFs, and images. The company says this new option 'will add a more human touch' to its platform, enabling users to hear someone speak their thoughts with all of the included emotion rather than just reading plain text on a screen. Voice clips are now being tested on the platform.

Quickly recording and sharing short voice clips isn't new, but has largely been limited to private messaging apps like Facebook Messenger. There's an obvious benefit to sharing these clips compared to text, namely that the user can be more expressive in what they state — rather than using emojis or GIFs to get the point across, everyone can hear it the way it was intended.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitter senior software engineer Remy Bourgoin revealed that the platform is testing the ability to directly record and share voice clips from the composer window. A new record button is located in the bottom left corner near the camera icon; tap and then talk to record up to 140 seconds of audio.

If you need to say more than what a single clip can hold, Bourgoin explains that the user merely has to keep talking; a new tweet will be created automatically when the previous one hits the time limit, resulting in a thread of tweets with audio clips. Tapping an image on these voice tweets will trigger playback, which will happen in a dedicated window at the bottom of the screen for iPhone users.

The tweets with voice audio can include text, as well, introducing whatever the content is about. At this point in time, only a 'limited' number of Twitter users have access to this new feature on iOS, but it'll only be 'weeks' before all iPhone users get access to the tool. It's unclear when Android users can expect the same.