2021 has been a good year for WhatsApp

In the past, we published an article about WhatsApp being outdated in terms of features and that they need to look ahead. In this article, we want to talk about all the new features released this year and their step forward.

It must be said that WhatsApp is improved a lot this year. Several new features have been released and we were so surprised: WhatsApp has never released so many important features in the past. Yes, the development is always slow, and this is to ensure the best bug-free experience for us, but we know they can do even better.
What is the news in 2021 and what we can expect for the next year?

• Terms of Service: a lot of people complained about the new Terms of Service, claiming that they would have given more power to Facebook over our privacy. This was big misinformation, because chats and calls are still end-to-end encrypted. We explained the differences between the old Terms of Service and the new ones. Finally, WhatsApp was planned to make the new Terms of Service optional. We hope a better communication between WhatsApp and their users in the future.
• Importing animated sticker packs: the ability to import third party sticker packs has been included on WhatsApp for Android and iOS. We hope to be able to implement better stickers, for example, by using the Lottie framework.
• WhatsApp Calling from the Desktop: it’s finally possible to place private and secure calling from the desktop. Are group calls expected for the new year on the desktop app?
• Speeding up voice notes: this addition has been very appreciated. A new global voice note player is expected to be released the next year.
• Security and privacy measures: WhatsApp cares your privacy and security, so they are always working on bringing the best secure experience for you.
• Mark Zuckerberg and Will Cathcart confirmed to WABetaInfo 3 features to come on WhatsApp: Default Message Timer, View Once and Multi-Device were confirmed and released to users. In particular, multi-device is the best feature released this year. We expect Multi-Device 2.0 to be released in the next months.

• New Archive: Finally, WhatsApp has released a new way to keep your chats in the archive.
• Best Quality Photos: WhatsApp has finally released a new feature to send best quality photos. We expect a new way to send original quality photos while sending them, for example, a shortcut in the drawing editor.
• Moving Chats from iOS to Android: WhatsApp is still planning to release the feature for more Android 12 devices, but this was very good news for some lucky users. WhatsApp will release the ability to migrate your chat history from Android to iOS in the coming next months.
• End-to-end encrypted backups: WhatsApp has finally released new features to protect your backup from unauthorized access. We expect more features to improve user privacy like this one.
• My Contacts Except: this is one of the best features released this year, but it has not been rolled out to everyone yet. We hope features to be rolled out faster for more users the next year.
• The Universal Windows Platform app: finally, WhatsApp is releasing a beta for their UWP app on Windows. WhatsApp is working very hard to improve this app and we should see many improvements during the next year.
• Novi: a small pilot program has been released in the US. It would be amazing to bring the digital wallet to more countries.

What features will be available for the next year? Message Reactions, Communities, and a new time limit to delete messages for everyone and in groups, if you’re a group admin, but more is surely coming. Be sure to follow WABetaInfo on Twitter to discover their plans and what’s new on WhatsApp beta for Android, iOS, Web/Desktop, Windows! Thanks WhatsApp, and thank you for another year together!

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