Meta-owned Whatsapp – the world’s most widely used instant messaging platform – has introduced a wide array of exciting features in recent months, with the platform constantly adding user-friendly upgrades to enhance the service.
From improved functionality to boosting privacy, the new features provide users with new and improved ways to connect and communicate with their loved ones.
Here are 8 new features, while these features will soon be, available globally:
4 phones may use a single account
WhatsApp users can now use their account for up to four mobiles simultaneously, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg announced last month. “Starting today, you can log into the same WhatsApp account on up to four phones,” he said in a post.
While the multi-device feature has been long available, it could only be used through browsers, computers, or tablets. But now four mobile phones may use a single account.
This feature will come in handy for those using separate phones for home, work, or business that are looking to use one account to link them all.
Password protected chats
This week, Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp will now make chats completely private, by allowing users to keep chats password protected. According to him, a separate folder will have locked chats and will not appear with the rest of your chats.
Password-protected chats will not display any message content or even the sender in notifications.
Truecaller
Truecaller will soon start making its caller identification service available over WhatsApp and other messaging apps to help users spot potential spam calls over the internet, the company told Reuters on Monday.
Telemarketing and scamming calls have been on the rise in countries like India, where users get about 17 spam calls per month on average, according to a 2021 report by Truecaller.
Animated emojis
The new feature is aimed to improve user experience by making messages more fun to share and enhancing communication.
The animated emojis will be sent by default. This means that users may not have control over deciding whether the emoji they send will be animated or not.
Saving disappearing messages
This brand-new feature – known as the ‘keep in chat’ feature – allows users to save any important messages that could possibly disappear.
In the notification, the sender can veto the decision, thereby keeping control of the message with the sender itself, thus, if the receiver wants to keep the message safe then the sender will get notified.
The messages that have been ‘kept’ will then show up in a separate list called ‘Kept Messages’ which will appear in the chat info.
Control who can see you when you’re online
WhatsApp users will be able to pick the contacts that can see them online. If a user does not want any of their contacts to know that they are currently using a platform, they can block them from seeing the ‘online’ indicator that appears on the chat.
Control who can see you when you’re online
View-once messages are texts you can send on WhatsApp that get deleted after they are viewed by the receiver.
With this privacy update, receivers may not take screenshots of any message, photographs or video that is sent with the view-once feature.
