Voice Message (bridged from Whatsapp) not shown as playable file

[ArneNostitz]

Hi, sorry if this is covered somwhere else - i wasn´t able to find an answer though.

When bridging voice messages from whatsapp it is discplayed as "audio" text link and does not play back on click (it tries to open the file somwhere else)
on desktop it works

sending a voice message through the new system works flawless on ios. (awesome!! thanks)

thanks a lot for all your work! this is an amazing tool!!

[stefanceriu]

Hi, thank you for your kind words!

This feels like a bridging issue. It would be great if you could redirect it to https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp/issues.

[ArneNostitz]

hi thanks for your answer. I will post it over there.
though as it's working on desktop and web I was wondering if the issue comes from the way iOS handles things ...

this is how they look:

and when I tap it I can only save it.

[stefanceriu]

In order for iOS to interpret them properly the voice message payloads need to follow the specifications defined here https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/travis/msc/voice-messages/proposals/3245-voice-messages.md

I assume that's not being respected throught the whatsapp bridge and they get interpreted as normal files (which you can download)

[ArneNostitz]

they responded with this: The bridge follows the current spec for sending audio messages (https://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.6.1#m-audio), Element iOS doesn't support that for some reason (but does support a non-standard voice message format). If/when the new format is standardized, the bridge will switch to sending those.

[ArneNostitz]

is there anything that can be done in element iOS to support this standard? as whatsapp users tend to send voice messages very often this is the main reason why i can´t delete the whatsapp app from my devices ...

[stefanceriu]

I've raised a point with the product team to try to reuse the existing voice message UI to playback generic audio files but I don't have an estimate on when that might happen.

[ArneNostitz]

is there such a big difference between those files? why is it working in element desktop? can the audio file format be standardised as they mentioned in the whatsapp bridge forum? sorry that im not more help, but i was wondering if i am the only one who would like to use this in element ios?

[ArneNostitz]

today i got a voice message pushed over by signal. as i am not able to listen to these in ios element i do not use them ... but this seems to be an mp3 compared to the aac from whatsapp...
it would be awesome if this would somehow be solved as it is on desktop-mac ... as there all these audiofiles are played back flawless.

[stefanceriu]

There are multiple problems at play here:

• element iOS doesn't currently support playback for simple audio files
• the bridges send over simple audio files (thus not supported atm) as they don't implement the 3245-voice-messages msc
• the official voice message implementation uses ogg/opus which is not nativelly supported on iOS (needs conversion)

What we will try to do is to reuse the existing voice message UI to playback normal audio files (possibly without the conversions step) but again, I don't have an estimate on how long it will take.

[ArneNostitz]

that sounds awesome - thanks for this info and really looking forward to it. thanks!

[ArneNostitz]

🎉🎉🎉 oh my what a glorious day!!! The sun wasn't shining but you made the world a happy place. Thank you so much! I had no idea that this would excite me so much, but it did. Thank you thank you thank you.

[stefanceriu]

I was going to ask if it's working okay but I'll take that as an yes 😁 Happy to help and thank you for raising the issue!