10 new WhatsApp features

WhatsApp, the world’s most popular and widely used instant messaging platform, is always in continuous development. The messaging platform continues to add new features and improve user experiences to provide its users with new and intuitive ways to connect and communicate with people. Recently, WhatsApp increased the file sharing limit up to 2?GB and introduce a new feature called Communities. Similar to these, Whatsapp has announced several new features coming to the instant messaging platform. In this article, we take a look at the new WhatsApp features expected to launch in 2022. We’ll also take a look at the many new in-development features that have been spotted in the wild by the community. So, without further ado, let’s get started.?

1. Communities

Currently, Whatsapp allows users to create groups to share messages, images, videos, and more with a group of people. Soon the instant messaging platform is all set to introduce a?Communities feature where users will be able to create many individual groups and bring them together under a single Community and manage it. For instance, WhatsApp says, “Communities will make it easier for a school principal to bring all the parents of the school together to share must-read updates and set up groups about specific classes, extracurricular activities, or volunteer needs.”

The Communities feature will also have new tools for admins, including the ability to send announcement messages to entire groups or select groups. WhatsApp says that they are also making several improvements to how the groups feature works, regardless of whether the user is a part of a Community or not. The company also notes that they are introducing new and improved ways to reduce overload in more extensive chats in groups. Hopefully, this will help users easily parse through those tens or hundreds of messages in group chats. And as always, the Community feature is protected by the end-to-end encryption technology, which makes the messages, images, videos, and any other media that you share with people, stay between you and the intended recipients.?

2. Larger group size?

WhatsApp is increasing the group limit to 512 people from the current allowed 256 people. The increase in limit comes as a relief for users and admins who wanted to add more people to the group chat discussions. With this, WhatsApp is now one step closer to the competitor Telegram. This allows users to create groups as large as… 1,00,000 people in it using “Supergroups”.

3. More Emoji reactions

WhatsApp is currently rolling out an Emoji reaction feature that allows users to react to chat messages using Emojis. Currently, the Emoji reactions are limited to just six emojis, which are: Thumbs up, Red heart, face with tears of joy, Hushed face, crying face, and Folded hands emojis. WhatsApp says they are adding more emoji reactions over time.?

4. Ability for admins to delete unwanted messages

One of the several features coming to WhatsApp in 2022 is the ability for admins to delete certain messages in a group chat. When the Admin Delete feature rolls out to WhatsApp in the coming months, administrators of the groups will finally be able to remove problematic messages from everyone’s chats at any time. Once the admin deletes the message, it’ll no longer be available to any member of the group.?

5. More participants in voice calls

WhatsApp has announced that the company is increasing the group voice call limit to up to 32 people. At present, only 8 people can be added to a group call. This brings the instant messaging platform closer to other chat apps like Telegram, which has no limit on the number of people you can add to a group voice chat. It is worth noting that the limit for video calls remains the same.

6. Chat filters

WhatsApp introduced chat filters to business account users a while ago, and now, according to a report from the WABetainfo, the company is working on bringing the chat filter feature to the standard user accounts. As you can see in the screenshot, once the feature rolls out users will be able to filter chats by unread chats, contacts, non-contacts, and groups. This will be a welcome addition since currently, users can only find chats by tapping the Search button in the three-dot menu and searching for individual messages. The chat filter option will make it even easier to find the desired message by filtering chat messages by groups and criteria.

7. Companion Mode for multi-device sync?

It looks like WhatsApp is going to add a multi-device sync feature called “WhatsApp Companion Mode,” which allows users to link a secondary mobile device to their WhatsApp account, including tablets. As of now, users can only link the existing WhatsApp account to a desktop. The above screenshot reveals more details about how the Companion Mode feature will work when it releases. Users will be able to access the WhatsApp account on multiple devices. The report also indicates that if the user decides to switch to the Companion mode and tries to connect a registered WhatsApp account to a new device, all the existing local data including chats and media will be erased, and the user will be switched to the new WhatsApp account. According to WABetainfo, Companion Mode will also be available for iOS devices.

8. Polls

It looks like users will get the ability to create polls on WhatsApp in a future update. As you can see in the screenshot, users can create group polls and add up to twelve options to them. A similar feature has been spotted in the WhatsApp desktop client as well. Seems like WhatsApp is widely testing the Group Poll feature. It is unfortunately unknown when this feature is going to land on the stable version.?

9. Quick reactions to status updates

s you can see in the screenshot from WABetainfo, the instant messaging giant, is working on a feature where you can react with emojis on status updates. The Emojis you can respond with include: Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes, Face with Tears of Joy, Face with Open Mouth, Crying Face, Folded Hands, Clapping Hands, Party Popper, and A Hundred Points. When the feature rolls out officially, WhatsApp might decide to add more Emojis to the list.?

10. More time limit for deleting sent messages

WhatsApp currently allows you to delete the scent messages within the time limit of 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds. But, it seems WhatsApp might be planning to increase the time limit to up to 2 days and 12 hours. It is worth noting that, according to previous reports, WhatsApp was planning to increase message delete the limit to up to a week, but seems like it has changed its mind and settled on a more reasonable 2 and a half day limit. As of now, we don’t know when the company plans to officially change to this new time limit for deleting chat messages.?