If you’re an iPhone user who communicates with your friends and family using audio messages, you may be happy to know that you can keep up with updates from your loved ones — especially those who tend to be a bit long-winded — at an accelerated pace.
The iPhone allows users to play audio messages at faster speeds, and apparently, a lot of people had no idea this option existed. A TikTok user shared a post on Sunday that showed a video demonstration of this feature, writing in the caption: “When I tell you I audibly gasped out loud. Voice memo girls, did you know this?????”
“This is actually life changing,” one commenter wrote.
“My friends talk so damn slow this is life changing!” wrote another.
But this feature was evidently old news for other TikTok users, who have already been zipping through their audio messages. “I thought everyone already knew this,” one person wrote.
While Apple has provided its iPhone users with the option to send audio messages — also referred to as voice notes — for years, enhancements of the messaging option include features like automatic transcriptions and background playback, which allows users to play an audio message even when they exit the Messages app on their phone.
Apple lists the playback speed adjustment option for audio messages on its website under its iOS17 update, which was released in 2023.
If you want to increase the playback speed of an audio message, you can go to the Messages app on your iPhone and find the conversation that has the voice note. Once you’ve found the audio message, you can touch and hold the play button (blue circle with an arrow) and select the speed you want. Apple gives you options to listen from a 1.25x speed to a 2x speed.
While getting updates from your friends and family in a sped-up fashion may suit your busy lifestyle, there are some important things to keep in mind when it comes to your listening habits.
Princeton University neuroscientist Uri Hasson, who studies how the brain processes sped-up speech, previously told HuffPost that watching TikTok videos on faster speeds, for instance, may have some downsides for your brain.
He said that videos with faster speeds don’t have the necessary pauses in speech that allow us to remember and understand what we watch.
“The thinking is done in the gap between the words. When I’m speaking and I’m taking a moment, I’m thinking and you’re thinking about what I’m saying,” he said, later adding that people typically lose comprehension after 1.5x speed.
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But it’s also important to keep in mind that your brain can adapt to different speaking speeds. Hasson explained that your comprehension of sped-up speech depends on who’s speaking — and that some people sound perfectly fine at faster speeds.
Overall, it’s good to keep in mind how your listening habits may or may not be affecting you, and it’s always helpful to stay up-to-date with new features on your phone that may help you efficiently stay up-to-date with your loved ones.