Many people are already familiar with the audio messages in WhatsApp. In fact, there are people who almost only send voice messages in WhatsApp. There is now good news for those people: you can also quickly record a video message and send it in the chat. Now you might be wondering: what’s the difference with a regular video? And how do you create a WhatsApp video message? We will show you that in this tip.
- Difference between video message and video recording
- Create video message
- Clean up videos
What is the difference between a WhatsApp video message and recording a video?
If you want to send a video recording to someone, you can of course record a video of yourself for years and send it separately. But a video message makes everything a little more streamlined. While a recorded video is a separate file that you have to record and send separately, things are a lot smoother with a video message. Viewing it is also easier: it plays immediately in the conversation itself, without you having to tap it. So while watching and listening to a video message, you can also type a message back. This makes it more accessible than recording a separate video.
Create video message in WhatsApp
Creating a video message in WhatsApp is similar to creating an audio message. It works like this:
- Open WhatsApp and go to the chat in which you want to send the video message.
- Tap the microphone button at the bottom right once. This now switches to a video camera.
- Then press and hold the button with the video camera. The screen will count down three seconds and recording will begin automatically. Now record your video message.
- You can swipe left to cancel recording. Swipe up to freeze recording and create your video message hands-free.
- Release to send or tap the send button if you recorded the message hands-free.
The video message is then sent in a round window and appears among the regular messages in the chat. By default, a video message plays immediately without sound. Tap the circular video message to hear the sound. The video will then be slightly larger, but still played within the conversation itself. The outer ring shows you approximately how long the video will last. It is not possible to scroll through a video. It is therefore important that you as a sender do not make it too long. So it is mainly intended for short messages. After playing, the circle of the video message automatically becomes smaller.
Clean up WhatsApp videos
Since the summer of 2023, it has been possible to upload HD videos with WhatsApp. Previously, the clips were compressed to 480p, which took up less space. Uploading Full HD and 4K is still not possible, but with the support of HD videos you still get very reasonable quality. This does have consequences for the storage space on your iPhone: it will fill up faster, even if you do not store them locally. Group chats in particular in which many videos are exchanged can gradually take up a lot of space. If you have an iPhone with 128GB of storage or less, you will have to clean up more often.
Via WhatsApp settings you can indicate that you never want to save files locally. You can also view large files and throw away what you don’t want to keep. You can do this per contact person or by starting with the largest files. Read more about deleting photos and videos from WhatsApp in our tip.
Do you prefer FaceTime? From iOS 17 you can also create a video message in FaceTime, which the other person can watch at a later time.
