WhatsApp Android beta gets Archived Chats menu; Ignore archived chats feature under testing

WhatsApp, the messaging platform owned by Facebook has been hitting the tech headlines from time to time as it is getting many new features. Most of these new features are under beta testing and are yet to make their way into the stable version of the messaging app.

A few months back, we came across a report suggesting that WhatsApp is working on a new Vacation Mode. When enabled, this feature is said to archive the muted conversations automatically. However, it is said to be under testing for now and isn't available for all users.

New WhatsApp features

Now, those at WABetaInfo has spotted this feature under the name "Ignore archived chats". This feature appears to be a part of the latest beta update for Android with the beta version number 2.19.101. The update is also claimed to have added a

Apart from the new "Archived chats" menu option, there appears to be no other feature added to the latest beta version of the app. With this feature, users can access the archived chats quickly without having to scroll down to the bottom of the chats. We can soon expect the "Ignore archive chats" feature to be rolled out and this can be enabled from the notification settings of WhatsApp. On turning this feature on, the archived chat notifications will not be displayed even when there is a new message.

However, the "Ignore archived chats" and Vacation Mode features are slightly different. The latter will prevent chats from being unarchiving only on muting them. But the former will prevent both the muted and non-muted chats from getting unarchived on receiving a new message or call. It will do so even if it was archived once in the past. With this new feature, archived chats will not be unarchived without the user's consent.