WhatsApp: New features added and spotted on beta versions in 2017

| Updated: Friday, December 29, 2017, 12:17 [IST]

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WhatsApp has progressed to become one of the most popular messaging apps with over 1.2 billion users across the world. In India alone, the Facebook-owned messaging platform has over 200 million users.

With the ever-growing user base, WhatsApp appears to have added several new features to enhance the user experience. The platform's beta versions have also been spotted getting many new features those are yet to be rolled out to the stable version of the messaging app.

Other than improving the user experience, WhatsApp is releasing many new features in order to keep it ahead of the competition that is posed by the other such messaging platforms. While the WhatsApp Status that was inspired by Snapchat Stories became a massive hit, it is not the only feature that has been added to the platform. There are many new features that WhatsApp received since the debut of this year.

Let's take a look at the WhatsApp features those were added officially and features those were spotted in the beta versions over here.

Delete for Everyone

WhatsApp brought the much-needed Delete for Everyone feature for all the users a few months back. This is one of the major changes introduced by WhatsApp. This feature allows users to delete messages those have been sent by mistake and this is applicable in both individual and group chats. All file types such as messages, videos, images, files, etc. can be deleted using this feature.

Share Live Location

WhatsApp introduced the live location sharing feature that lets users share their real time location with their family and friends. The live location can be shared in both individual and group chats and does not require the app to be used actively. There is a Live until option letting users to restrict how long they want to be tracked by others and the maximum time limit is up to 8 hours.

WhatsApp for Business

WhatsApp for Business is a standalone app that lets users communicate with businesses that they care about. The verified profiles will make it easier for businesses to reach out to consumers via WhatsApp. The verified accounts will get a green badge with white tick next to their names. And, users will not be able to delete the sent messages.

WhatsApp Status

WhatsApp Status feature that was launched earlier this year is similar to Snapchat Status. The new WhatsApp Status feature replaced the text status with multiple photos, a short video and text. These statuses will disappear automatically in 24 hours. This feature become extremely popular that many users started communicating through Status.

Two-step verification

WhatsApp rolled out the two-step verification to all users as an additional security feature. This feature allows users to verify their number whenever they install the app on a new device in a more secure manner. Users can provide a six-digit passcode when registering their number with WhatsApp again.

Increase in media sharing limit

Earlier, WhatsApp let users share just 10 photos at a time but the media sharing limit increased to 30 this year. Eventually, users can now send up to 30 media files at a time.

In-app YouTube playback

WhatsApp is testing the in-app YouTube playback that lets users play YouTube videos within the app. This way, users can watch videos within WhatsApp itself. The videos can be watched in full-screen mode or picture-in-picture mode.

Ability to share all file types

Recently, WhatsApp rolled out the support to transfer all file types including archives so that there is no hassle in sharing any specific file type with others. With this ability, users can share even APK files with others. The maximum file sharing limit is 128MB on iOS, 100MB on Android, and 64MB on Web.

Photo bundling, photo filters and video streaming

WhatsApp brought in the photo bundling option that allows users to send photos and videos as an album. The app with group the photos into a bunch so that the recipient gets the photos as a bundle and not one after the other. On opening the album, all the images will be listed on a single page.

Also, the users got the ability to watch received videos while the same is being downloaded in the background. The other feature is the video streaming ability that lets users add color filters to the media before sending it to others. However, the photo filters feature is limited only to iPhone users so far.

The iPhone users got the Night mode feature on WhatsApp for the low-light camera photography and the same works automatically. The other feature brought in for the iPhone users is that Siri can read out the messages aloud for the users.

New features for group admins

The group admins get many new capabilities on WhatsApp. They can create restricted groups in which only they have the ability to send and receive messages in order to seek attention of the members. Also, they can prevent the other members of the group from editing the group details such as name and icon.

Improved chat experience

The pinned chats feature allows users to pin up to three contacts above the other conversations. Also, the app received the ability to send messages to multiple contacts at the same time. The next feature that was brought to enhance the user experience while chatting is emoji search.