What is happening
WhatsApp adds privacy features that let you silently exit group chats, hide your online status, and prevent others from taking screenshots of photos meant to be viewed once.
why does it matter
Privacy features will add better ways to control your visibility in conversations and take prying eyes away from how often you check in on the app.
What follows
The new WhatsApp features are announced about a month before Apple’s iMessage is expected to bring iOS 16 to the masses, with the latter adding editing and forwarding of messages.
WhatsApp announced three new privacy features on Tuesday, one of which will let you leave a group chat without notifying the entire group.
The Meta-owned company says it will add the ability to mute groups, meaning admins will still get an alert, but everyone else in a group chat won’t. This could be especially useful for larger group chats, for example those that are themed around an event or an overactive chat that you no longer find so engaging.
WhatsApp will also let you hide your active online status from specific people, and when enabled, the app won’t show select people the exact times you’re available within the app. The app currently shows when you’re online to anyone who can view your profile within the app. WhatsApp can also show people when you were last active, and this can already be hidden from others within the app’s privacy settings.
The ability to mute groups and hide your online status will roll out to WhatsApp later this month, and its third feature, currently in testing, will prevent others from taking screenshots of messages that should be sent see once This has been a major problem for apps that encourage ephemeral messaging like Snapchat, which in the past have combated the problem by sending a notification when a message is copied via a screenshot.
While it should help, it’s worth noting that it’s not foolproof: even an ephemeral message can still be captured by a separate device like another phone or camera. Anyone sending sensitive material should be careful even after WhatsApp starts the screenshot blocking feature.
The new wave of WhatsApp features comes a month before the expected public release of iOS 16, which will update iMessage to include features such as editing a message and unsending a message. Both iOS 16 features will only work between Apple devices that support iMessage. Unsending a message will work in the same way that WhatsApp and other chat apps already allow you to delete an existing message, replacing the previous text with a notification that a message has not been sent.
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