WhatsApp’s another interesting feature that is now available to beta users is hide muted Status from contacts. It should not be confused with ‘hiding’ the WhatsApp stories. This, essentially, allows you to hide the Stories from the contacts that you have already muted.
Those who put up stories on social media, say on Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp, must have picked up on the fact that the so-called ‘muted’ stories appear gray under a different segment in the bottom. This is done by long-pressing a story after which a pop-up on screen that says “New status updates from the contact (contact name) won’t appear under recent updates anymore” with options to ‘Cancel or ‘Mute’ underneath.
WhatsApp recently rolled out the beta version 2.19.260 for Android – which reportedly allows you to hide away Stories you have muted.
Users can mute a contact’s Story on WhatsApp with the three-dot menu in it. The story is then hidden in the Status tab, which has an arrow indicator so that one could expand the muted portion to see the content. It is being said that it is an A/B test at present, so users might not even have access to it.
Users will have to toggle it in order to actually see the muted contacts’ stories instead of a glimpse of the greyed out stories on WhatsApp. You will find this in the latest beta version v2.19.260 when you sign up as a tester on Play Store and download it from APK Mirror.
Some reports also suggest the Facebook-owned WhatsApp is working on an Instagram-inspired Boomerang, Dark mode and even developing a desktop version of its instant messaging app which would let users use WhatsApp on a computer without connecting their phone to the internet.
In the WhatsApp beta for iOS 2.19.100.21, WABetaInfo reported another feature under the testing stage. The feature brings an alignment indicator for emojis, stickers, and texts on Status and has been available on Instagram. It is essentially the ability to precisely adjust emojis, text and stickers on photos, GIFs and videos.
Meanwhile, the fingerprint lock feature will now be available for all Android beta users who are using version 2.19.221 of WhatsApp.