With the introduction of voice messages in 2013, sharing voice notes became a quick and easy process, helping those who do not want to type a message. The simply designed feature helps users share more intimate and expressive conversations in the form of a voice note.
In a 30 March 2022 blog, WhatsApp reported that its users share 7 billion voice messages on average, which are protected and kept private using end-to-end encryption.
Taking a cue from this, the messaging app launched new features in March 2022 to improve the WhatsApp voice message experience. These include:
Out of chat playback: It helps you hear a voice message outside the chat, while you read and respond to other messages or multitask on your smartphone.
Pause/resume recording: You can pause your voice message recording to, for example, collect your thoughts or do away with distractions and resume recording once ready.
Waveform visualisation: It shows a visual representation of the sound, on the voice message, to indicate the recording is on.
Draft preview: You can listen to your voice messages before sending them to your loved ones or clients.
Remember playback: In case you press pause while listening to a voice message in a chat, this feature lets you resume from where you left off.
Fast playback on Forwarded Messages: The feature allows you to increase the speed of regular and forwarded voice messages to 1.5x or 2x, to listen to them faster.
Introducing communities
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 upon the user experiences to provide its users with new and intuitive ways to connect and communicate with people. want to Joint Our MSB GRAFIX WhatsApp Group, Recently, WhatsApp increased the file sharing limit up to 2GB 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 several 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 several 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 the announcement messages to the entire groups or select groups. WhatsApp says that they are also making several improvements to how the groups feature works regardless if 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 larger chats in groups. Hopefully, this will help users easily parse through those tens of 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”.
Organisations like local clubs, schools or businesses heavily depend on WhatsApp to work and share confidential information. This is why the messaging app introduced a one-stop solution called Communities in April 2022.
This feature helps to share information with a larger number of people by bringing different group chats under one roof, using a system that benefits them.
In this way, people can receive updates sent to the entire community, as well as set up smaller discussion groups who share common interests. For instance, a school principal can use the Community feature to bring all the parents together and share important updates in one space. They can also create groups for specific classes or extracurricular activities.
Additionally, Communities will empower group admins with new tools that include announcement messages that can be broadcast to everyone.
More features will be enabled before the entire Communities interface is launched later in 2022. While they have not specified the date, WhatsApp is focussing on developing Communities this year to support its daily users.
Post-launch, they will be able to use Admin Delete, where WhatsApp group admins can delete problematic messages from everyone’s chats, and voice calls, a one-tap voice calling feature where up to 32 people can be on the call.
Reactions, sharing large files and increased group sizes
The messaging app updated its interface with emoji Reactions on 5 May.
The update includes six emoji reactions — love, laugh, sad, surprise and thanks. These are similar to the ones available on Facebook and Instagram. Quick and fun to use, the reactions appear under messages when you tap on it and hold it down for a couple of seconds. The user can select the most suitable reaction for the options. The feature helps to reduce the number of messages as well. Additionally, Meta shared that it will be adding more expressions to this feature.
Through the update, users can share a file size of 2 GB on WhatsApp. The limit was earlier set at 100 MB. However, it is advised to use WiFi for the seamless transfer of larger files. Also, while downloading or uploading a file, a counter will be displayed, indicating the time the file will take to transfer. The feature is safeguarded with end-to-end encryption.
To further support businesses, schools and other close-knit groups, WhatsApp will allow group admins to add up to 512 people to a group.
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 MSBGRAFIX, 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.
Pools
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.
WhatsApp is also looking to introduce more features and updates to simplify the user experience. While the date of launch is yet to be confirmed, the features are likely to debut in 2022.
For iOS users, the app will enable them to see profile photos of individuals and groups in WhatsApp notifications. While this feature is in the testing stage, it will soon be released to others.
WhatsApp is planning to redo the design of its interface that tells who you are sharing media with. It will allow users to choose new recipients before sending media files. You will also be able to share an image, a video or a GIF on your status as well as chats.
A feature that might also get introduced this year across multiple devices would allow users to log out of their WhatsApp accounts, similar to Facebook or Instagram.
