TikTok is giving its comment section a serious upgrade. The social media company on Thursday announced several new comment features that will allow people to leave voice messages, vote in polls, and share multiple photos under videos — moving well beyond the simple text replies that have defined the app's comments since the beginning. More than 1.7 billion comments are shared on TikTok each day, according to the company.
The biggest addition is Voice Comments. Tapping the microphone icon in the comment box opens a recorder that captures up to 60 seconds of audio, and once it's posted, anyone scrolling through the comments can tap to listen. TikTok is rolling the feature out globally over the next month, though it will initially be limited to accounts belonging to users 18 and older. "Sound and music have shaped TikTok from the very beginning," the company said — the update extends that audio-first DNA to the comment layer.
Creators are getting a new tool called Comment Polls, which lets them ask followers to vote directly in the comments under their own videos. A creator can add a poll while replying to their own content, choose up to five answer options, and set a timeframe for voting, with results tracked in real time — effectively moving the "content planning meeting" into the comment section, letting creators decide what to film next, which outfit to wear, or what followers want to see.
Visual sharing is expanding too. Photo Carousel Comments let users attach up to nine photos in a single reply, a shift TikTok says is meant to let people share "a full moment rather than a single frame." Rounding out the update is Live Photo Comments, which allows users to upload Live Photos straight from their camera roll — adding a brief burst of motion to an otherwise still image without requiring a full video upload. Unlike the other three features, Live Photo Comments is already available worldwide.
From a product-logic perspective, the overhaul reframes the comment section from a "feedback wall under videos" into an interaction layer closer to a messaging app. Voice messages, polls and photo carousels together are the standard toolkit of instant-messaging apps, not the traditional configuration of short-video comments. For the platform, richer interactive tools mean users are more willing to linger in the comments — without having to post an entirely new video every time they want to react.
Notably, voice comments also bring new governance challenges. TikTok confirmed that voice comments are subject to the same community guidelines as other content, relying on a mix of human review and automated detection — including speech-to-text transcription to identify violations. But under the influence of accents, speaking pace and background noise, transcription errors could lead to missed or false detections. For users, text comments can be revised and deleted at will, but once a voice comment is out there, its tone and background sounds are fully exposed in the public comment section.