With Meta at the helm, WhatsApp development has continued to chug along at a steady pace — particularly over the last year, with features being added left and right to help keep up with strong competitors in theencrypted messengerspace like Signal and Telegram. February has been no different despite being a short month, so we’ll dig into all the biggest changes that have happened so far to help you keep tabs.
10 years of WhatsApp under Meta ownership: Feels like one long day
We’ve seen loads of copy-pasting over the years
Channels and Communities keep getting better
After seeing a wide rollout in September of last year, WhatsApp Channels have quickly caught on as a way for brands and celebrities to share messages with a large audience. The one-to-many nature of these messages presents unique problems, like the potential for an overabundance of emoji reactions to a popular post. To help prevent things from becoming overwhelming or nip conflicts in the bud before they arise, we learned this month that WhatsApp could soonlet Channel owners disable reactions on their posts. However, this feature has not rolled out yet and was only spotted in development on the beta channel, so it’s not certain if this will become a permanent fixture of Channels.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp has begun beta-testing a feature that would let youpin your favorite Channels to the top of your listfor easy access. Finally, one Channels feature that went live for users of the stable app for Android, iOS, and the web, wasthe ability to share Channel posts through Status updates. While you could already share Channel posts in 1-to-1 and group chats, sharing them as a Status update provides a simple way to passively inform friends and followers about things that have happened in your favorite Channels.
You can now share WhatsApp channel posts via Status updates
Widely available on all platforms
Since rolling out in earnest last year after an initial announcement in 2022,WhatsApp Communitieshave provided a way to bundle multiple smaller groups into one large meeting space, proving particularly useful for organizations. Every Community has an Announcements group, where admins can broadcast relevant info to all the members. These Announcements can only be made by administrators, but achange spotted in WhatsApp beta for Android v2.24.4.12this month indicates that regular users in Communities may soon be able to reply to messages in the Announcements group.
WhatsApp’s Community Announcements could get a lot noisier
Soon, any member could respond to Community Announcement posts
A touch of personal flair
In February, WhatsApp continued its work on an upcoming feature that will allow people to register usernames in the app. The feature was first identified in May 2023, but there was a long period of silence before it was seen again in December of last year. This month, more movement was spotted, asscreenshots emerged showing how usernames will be validated, including their alphanumeric requirements.
WhatsApp continues to build on the upcoming username functionality
A new beta reveals the validation process for usernames
Back on the subject of WhatsApp Status updates, we saw evidence this month thatthe Status tab could soon get a makeoverwith card-style previews. This new layout, replacing the old one with a circular display image, is only available in beta for now, but we’re expecting it to hit the stable channel at some point in the near future.
WhatsApp’s Status tab could get a makeover soon
Card-style previews are on the horizon
Keeping things private and secure
WhatsApp owes a lot of its popularity to security features like end-to-end encryption, and Meta hasn’t gotten away from this theme in its recent updates. In the newer beta builds from February, a feature was spotted thatprevents other users from capturing a screenshotof your profile picture. The app already lets you hide your pic from certain users, but this new ability takes things a step further.
WhatsApp may soon block others screenshotting your profile picture
The app already offers extensive options to hide the profile picture
On the security front, WhatsApp has taken another step in its fight against spam messages, a problem that has become all too common on the platform as the user base continues to grow. Now available to all users on the stable channel, a button on message notificationslets you directly block a senderand even report their account as spam — this means you don’t even have to open WhatsApp to deal with spammers, you can block them straight from your lock screen.
WhatsApp now lets you block spam right from your lock screen
Say good riddance to spam without ever opening it
Can’t forget about chats
Last but not least, Meta has taken steps to improve the core experience in its messenger in February, as WhatsApp chats are set to see a few new upgrades. Work was revealed on WhatsApp Web’s efforts to add a feature that would allow you tostar favorite chats for quick access, something that had already been spotted on iOS and would presumably come to Android as well.
Just last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that newadvanced text formatting options are rolling outto the stable channel, offering the ability to make bulleted lists, numbered lists, block quotes, and inline code by attaching certain characters to strings of text. Shortly after that, we learned that WhatsApp may finallylet you send high-quality media by default, and though the feature is still under development and isn’t available to even beta testers just yet, it’s something we expect to see in the stable channel before long.
WhatsApp could soon let you send high-quality media by default
Saving you the trouble of tapping the HD icon each time
With all these changes coming in a short month, we’re excited to see what March brings for WhatsApp. Meta certainly hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down its break-neck development pace, and the continuous stream of fun and functional features over the last year has gone a long way towards keeping things fresh and exciting on WhatsApp.
