Twitter has started testing a new feature that will let users record and send voice messages in DMs. The feature has already started rolling out to some users in India, Brazil, and Japan, and here's how it works:

As you can see in the attached tweet, the feature lets you record a voice clip by tapping on the new "voice" button next to the text field. Tapping on the button plays a short animation and replaces the text field with a new bar, which indicates that the app is recording audio. Since the feature only supports 140s long voice messages, the bar also shows the amount of time you have left.

Once you're done, you can tap on the stop button next to the bar to stop recording. This replaces the bar with a new "Play audio" button that you can tap on to listen to your voice message before sharing it. In case you don't like your voice message for whatever reason, you can also tap on the "Cancel" button to delete your recording and start over. While the process is the same on both the iOS and Android versions of the app, iOS users can also press-and-hold the voice button to start recording and then swipe up and release to immediately send the voice message.

As mentioned earlier, the feature is currently only available for a handful of users in India, Brazil, and Japan. It wasn't available on any of my devices at the time of writing. However, Twitter has confirmed that the feature is rolling out in a phased manner, and it should reach more users in the coming days. It's worth mentioning that the feature will only roll out to Twitter for iOS and Android, and desktop users will only be able to listen to incoming messages.

Voice messages in DMs isn't the first voice-based feature that Twitter has tested on the platform. Back in June last year, the company released a feature that allowed iOS users to share audio clips as tweets. Although this feature doesn't seem to have taken off, the company is now testing Spaces — a Clubhouse-like voice chat service that's expected to roll out later this year.