Sending files, photos and voice notes

The messenger isn't just text — most equipment conversations involve photos, spec sheets, contracts, and voice walkthroughs. Here's how to share those.

What you can attach

Click the paper-clip icon (left of the message box). The file picker opens; you can also drag and drop into the chat.

Supported formats:

Anything else is rejected with a "unsupported file type" error. If you really need to share, say, a .docx or .zip, the workaround in v1 is to upload it to a cloud drive and paste the link — see Finding info in a chat for how the Links tab surfaces it later.

Limits

• 50 MB per file. Big enough for most spec sheets, photos and short videos. If your video is bigger, compress it or upload to YouTube/Vimeo and paste the link.
• Maximum 3 files per message. Send multiple messages if you have more — they'll group together visually for the recipient.

What attachments look like to the recipient

• Photos render inline. Click to view full-size in a lightbox.
• Videos show with a play button overlay. Click to play.
• Audio (including voice notes) gets an inline player with play/pause and a scrubber.
• PDFs and other documents show as a file row with the name, size and a download button.

Voice notes

If the message box is empty and you don't have any files attached, the send button is replaced with a microphone icon.

Click it to start recording. The composer turns into a recorder UI:

• A waveform shows what you're capturing.
• A timer counts up.
• Two buttons: Cancel (throws the recording away) and Stop & send (uploads and sends).

The clip lands in the chat as an audio attachment. There's no length limit beyond the 50 MB file size cap — that's about 30 minutes of decent-quality audio.

Permission prompt: the first time you record, your browser asks for microphone access. If you decline, the mic icon turns into an error. To re-enable, fix the permission in your browser's site settings.

Listing inquiries — the auto-attached listing card

When you start a chat from a listing's Ask the seller button, the first message automatically embeds a compact listing preview card: thumbnail, title, price, currency, link to the full listing.

This shows up to both of you, and it persists in the chat as a regular message — you can scroll back and click it any time to re-open the listing.

If you want to start a different listing inquiry with the same seller, do it from that other listing's page. You'll get a separate chat for it, with its own attached listing card.

Forwarding files

When you forward a message to another chat (see Forwarding and managing messages), the attachments travel with it. The forwarded copy points to the same file as the original — it's not duplicated on the server.

This means:

• Forwarded media doesn't count against your storage.
• If the original message gets deleted by its author before anyone read it, attachments could in theory disappear from forwards too — but in practice, you can only forward a message that's been read or that's yours, and a read message can no longer be deleted by its author. So forwarded attachments stay alive as long as you do.

What's on the server

Attachments are stored in our object store, served from a CDN-protected URL. They're not public — only people who can see the chat can fetch them, and links expire if you weren't logged in when you opened them. Don't paste an attachment URL outside Haubot expecting strangers to be able to access it.

Quick troubleshooting