5 Major Whatsapp Updates Which Will Change The Way You Are Using This App (Did You Miss These Updates?)

Facebook-owned social media platform, Whatsapp has undergone major changes this year. It is the most popular messaging platform with over 1.5 billion users globally.

Recently, Whatsapp has introduced a plethora of updates for its Android users which will arrive on Google Play Store. Below are some of the features that you might have missed.

Algorithm- Based Status Updates

Facebook at F8, 2019, had announced that it would be introducing algorithm-based Status Updates on Whatsapp that will show the updates according to the relevance rather than chronological order.

What this means is that users will now be able to see the updates of their frequently contacted people first.

Facebook has been following this algorithm for Instagram as well as the main app.

This feature is already rolled out in countries like Brazil, Spain, and India, and would soon branch out in many countries in the future.

Users To Have Control On Who Is Able To Add Them To Group Chats.

This privacy feature helps users from being added to Whatsapp groups by allowing them to change their group setting between three options : Nobody, Everyone, My Contacts, under the privacy menu of Whatsapp.

“Nobody”, will prevent anyone from adding you to a group but it won’t stop strangers from sending you private messages or invite link to join the group chat.’

“Everybody”, is a setting that allows anybody from adding you to a Whatsapp group, whereas “My Contact” limits this power to only people saved on your phone.

New Forward Message Feature To Help Prevent Spread Of Misinformation

To help curb the spread of fake news, WhatsApp has introduced this new feature that highlights messages as “Frequently Forwarded” if the number of shares is more than 5 times.

Users can check the number of shares by clicking on the “Info icon”, however, the detail is only available to Android users.

Consecutive Voice Messages Playback Feature

This new features now allows the voice messages on Whatsapp to be played automatically without having to tap on one voice message after another.

Until now, this feature was only available to iOS version but is now also available to Android users as well.

Profile Picture Download Option Disabled

The messaging app has disabled the option to download profile pictures on its Android Beta app, which after can update users can no longer download profile pictures on Whatsapp.

This feature has been updated on the iOS beta app as well. However if you are still feel the need to download the profile picture, you can always screenshot it.

Whatsapp has been trying hard to make the platform as secure and user-friendly as possible by releasing these updates, which only time will tell if it was successful or not