WhatsApp has announced new features for groups, including enhanced controls for group admins to manage privacy and a feature that makes it easier to identify groups that users share with their contacts. These features are available on both Android and iOS and are gradually rolling out to users over the coming weeks.
| Common questions | Answers |
|---|---|
| Name of the feature? | New features for group chats |
| Status? | Rolling out |
| Compatibility? | Latest versions of WhatsApp for iOS and Android are marked as compatible updates. |
| My WhatsApp version is the latest one available on the App Store and Google Play, but I still don’t have one of these features. Why? | WhatsApp announced that these features will be gradually available for everyone over the coming weeks. |
| How to join the community on WhatsApp? | WABetaInfo Community |
| Previous news? | WhatsApp beta for iOS 23.6.0.71: what’s new? WhatsApp is releasing a tweaked interface when loading a link preview! |
Today, WhatsApp published a new blog post to announce new features for groups. These features are definitely new and have been released to some beta testers in the last week and announced on this website. In particular, WhatsApp is announcing in their official blog post that the ability to approve who can join a group and see a list of groups in common with a certain contact by searching for their name will be available for all users on iOS and Android over the coming weeks:
- Quickly choose who can join a group: to give group admins more control over group privacy, a new feature has been released to users that allows them to decide who can join a group. Admins can now choose who is able to join when sharing a group invite link or making the group joinable in a community without sending a private request to the community admin. The feature was released to beta testers after installing the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.6.9 update and the WhatsApp beta for iOS 23.5.0.74 build from TestFlight.
- See which groups you have in common: as the number of groups grows, it is important to make it easier for people to find groups they have in common with others, even in the case they don’t remember their name. To address this, WhatsApp has made it possible to search for groups that a contact is a member of by searching for their name. This feature enables users to easily identify groups that they share with a particular contact or remind themselves of the name of a group they belong to together. The feature has been announced in the article about the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.6.20 update.
Note that, even if the screenshot is taken from WhatsApp for Android, these new features are also available on WhatsApp for iOS: update your app from the App Store or Google Play to get them. If you don’t have one of these features, please wait for a future update as they are released to even more users at a later date.
WhatsApp just announced two new features for status updates in a new blog post, which are gradually rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks.
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