WhatsApp, in the last 10 years, has become the most favoured messaging app with over 1.5 billion users around the world. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company has expanded the platform and added multiple features for its Android and iOS users, besides launching a standalone app for businesses. Recently, the Facebook-owned chat app rolled out some important features for its Android users.
These features come as a part of both stable and beta updates for WhatsApp on the Google Play store. For those who may have missed them, here is a rundown of the recent WhatsApp features –
Group invitation
A new privacy feature was added to WhatsApp that helps users from being added to groups. Under the privacy menu on WhatsApp, users can change their group settings to either ‘Nobody’, ‘Everyone’ or ‘My Contacts’. Accordingly, users will be added to groups. For those who choose ‘Nobody’ a request to join the group will be sent. It is available for beta users only.
Consecutive voice messages
This feature, as its name suggests, plays voice messages on WhatsApp one after another. Users will no longer need to tap on one voice message after another in order to play them. The messaging app will play the voice messages on its own. It is to be noted that this feature is available for Android users only.
Forwarding info
The facebook-owned company has introduced forwarding label in 2018 to put a curb on the fake news on the app. And now, it has further improved upon the latest addition in its forwarding info. Users can now know about how many times the particular message has been forwarded by just tapping on the ‘info’ icon. However, this information will only appear only if that message has, in fact, been forwarded. Again, the feature is only available for Android users.
Algorithm-based Status tab
During F8 2019, Facebook said that the company would soon introduce algorithm-based Status updates on its WhatsApp platform. Currently, Status updates on WhatsApp are categorised chronologically. However with this new change, Status updates of users most often contacted with be placed on top. The same algorithm is what the company follows for Instagram as well as its the main app.
Profile picture download disabled
It came as a surprise to many when the messaging app surprisingly disabled the option to download profile pictures on its Android beta app. After an update recently, users could no longer download profile pictures on WhatsApp. The messaging app has updated this on the iOS beta app as well. However, screens hotting the picture is still available as a workaround.
The new features, undoubtedly, add to WhatsApp position as the most popular messaging app. As it continues to evolve, the messaging platform has seen its share of issues. Recently, WhatsApp put the users’ information at risk because of an issue in its code. Miscreants used WhatsApp’s voice calling to call up at their target device, which subsequently installed the surveillance software and this software would be then be installed even if the receiver chose not to pick up that call. WhatsApp patched the code via an update, and also asked users to update it immediately.