WhatsApp, the world’s most popular and most used instant messaging platform, is always under constant development. The messaging platform continues to add new features and improve user experiences to provide its users with new and intuitive ways to connect and connect with people. Recently, WhatsApp increased the file sharing limit to 2GB and introduced a new feature called Communities. Similar to that, Whatsapp has announced several new features that will be rolling out to the instant messaging platform. In this article, we take a look at the new WhatsApp features that are expected to be launched in 2022. We will also take a look at Several new features are under development that have been spotted in the wild by the community. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
11 new features of WhatsApp expected to be launched in 2022
1. Societies
Currently, Whatsapp allows users to create groups to share messages, photos, videos, and more with a group of people. Soon, the instant messaging system is set to offer the communities feature where users will be able to create and manage multiple individual groups together into one community. For example, Whatsapp says “Communities will make it easy for the principal to bring all parents of the school together to share must-read updates and create groups about specific classes, extracurricular activities or volunteer needs.”
The Communities feature will also have new tools for admins including the ability to send announcement messages to entire groups or specific groups. WhatsApp says they are also making several improvements to how the Groups feature works regardless of whether the user is part of a community or not. The company also notes that it is introducing new and improved ways to Reduce the overload of large conversations in groups. We hope this helps users to easily analyze tens of hundreds of messages in group chats. As always, the community feature is protected by end-to-end encryption, which keeps messages, photos, videos, and any other media you share with people between you and the intended recipients.
2. Largest group size
WhatsApp increases the group limit to 512 people from the current allowed number of 256 people. The increase in the limit comes as a relief to users and admins who wanted to add more people to group chat discussions. With this WhatsApp is now one step closer to the rival Telegram. This allows users to create large groups of up to … 1,00,000 people using ‘Supergroups’.
3. More emoji reactions
WhatsApp is currently rolling out an Emoji interaction feature that allows users to reply to chat messages with Emojis. Currently, Emoji reactions are limited to only six emojis: Thumbs up, red heart, face with tears of joy, silent face, crying face, folded hands emoji. WhatsApp says they are adding more emoji reactions over time.
4. Administrators ability to delete unwanted messages
One of the many features coming to WhatsApp in 2022 is the ability for administrators to delete certain messages in a group chat. When WhatsApp’s Admin Delete feature rolls out in the coming months, group admins will finally be able to remove problematic messages from everyone’s chats at any time. Once the admin deletes the message, it will no longer be available to any member of the group.
5. More participants in voice calls
WhatsApp has announced that the company has increased the limit for group voice calls to 32 people. Currently, only 8 people can be added to a group call. This brings the instant messaging system closer to other chat apps like Telegram, which have no limit on the number of people you can add to a group voice chat. It is worth noting that the limit for video calls remains the same.
6. Chat filters
WhatsApp has introduced chat filters to business account users a while back, and now according to a report from WABetainfo, the company is working on bringing the chat filter feature to standard user accounts. As you can see in the screenshot, once the feature is rolled out, users will be able to filter chats by Unread chats, contacts, non-contacts and groups. This would be a welcome addition since at the moment, users can only find chats by clicking the Search button in the three-dot menu and searching for individual messages. Chat filter option will make it easier to find the desired message by filtering chat messages by groups and criteria.
7. Companion mode for multi-device sync
It looks like WhatsApp will add a multi-device sync feature called “WhatsApp Companion Mode”, which will allow users to link a secondary mobile device to their WhatsApp account, including tablets. As of now, users can only link their existing WhatsApp account to their desktop. The screenshot above reveals more details about how Companion Mode will work when it is released. Users will be able to access their WhatsApp account on multiple devices. The report also states that if the user decides to switch to Companion mode and tries to connect a registered WhatsApp account to a new device, all existing local data including chats and media will be erased and the user will be transferred to the new WhatsApp account. According to WABetainfo, a companion mode will be available for iOS devices as well.
8. Opinion polls
It looks like users will get the ability to create polls on WhatsApp in a future update. As you can see in the screenshot, users can create group surveys and add up to twelve options for them. A similar feature has been spotted in the WhatsApp desktop client as well. It appears that WhatsApp is extensively testing the Group Poll feature. It is unfortunately unknown when this feature will land on the stable version.
9. Quick feedback for status updates
As you can see in the screenshot from WABetainfo, the instant messaging giant is working on a feature where you can interact with emojis on status updates. Emojis you can interact with include: S.Face with Heart Eyes, Face with Tears of Joy, Face with Open Mouth, Crying Face, Folded Hands, Clapping Hand, Party Popper, and Hundred Points. When the feature is officially rolled out, WhatsApp may decide to add more Emojis to the list.
10. More time limit to delete sent messages
WhatsApp currently allows you to delete messages sent within 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds. However, it appears that WhatsApp may be planning to increase the time limit to 2 days and 12 hours. It is worth noting that according to previous reports, WhatsApp was planning to increase the number of deleted messages by up to a week, but it seems that it changed its mind and settled on a more reasonable limit for two and a half days. As of now, we don’t know when the company plans to officially change to this new time limit for deleting chat messages.
11. Profile pictures in message notifications
WhatsApp is also working on a feature where message notifications will include profile pictures of the sender. As you can see in the screenshot, when you receive a message from your contacts or groups, the notification will have the profile picture on the lock screen in addition to the notification center. This feature may not seem like a huge plus, but it will make it easy to quickly identify who sent the message without having to open WhatsApp.
12. Sign out of WhatsApp
Sign out of WhatsApp will replace the Delete Account button and support the upcoming multi-device feature. According to a report WaBetaInfo, which keeps track of WhatsApp updates, the app will finally bring the option to sign out for its users. The option will allow users to log out of their WhatsApp accounts from their devices, just like Facebook and other social networking apps. This feature was recently spotted in the new beta version of WhatsApp and is said to be rolling out to iOS and Android versions of the app soon. The WhatsApp logout feature will likely allow people on the app to use their accounts on multiple devices at the same time.
13. Instagram Reels on WhatsApp
WhatsApp to start the Instagram Reels section to move forward. The feature will It said Allow users to view Instagram Reels directly from the messaging app. This may be part of the WhatsApp integration plan with other Facebook-owned apps. For those unaware, Instagram Reels is the short video feature, which was added to the photo-sharing app last year after the government banned TikTok.
14. Read Later
“Read later” is said to be An improved version of the Archived Chats feature found on WhatsApp. When the chat is moved to read it later, WhatsApp will not send notifications for that chat. Additionally, the feature will include a “vacation mode”, which will ensure that the “read later” chats work the same as the archived chats on the current stable version. Read Later will also come with an edit button for users to customize settings. WhatsApp users will also be able to select multiple conversations at once to quickly unarchive them.
15. WhatsApp insurance
Soon you will be able to buy insurance via WhatsApp in India. The Facebook-owned messaging platform is set to launch Partial health and pension insurance products on its messaging platform in India through associations with licensed financial services firms. Initially, WhatsApp will sell SBI bag general health insurance coverage and HDFC retirement plans via its platform.
So, these were some of the features that WhatsApp seems to be working on for 2022. As mentioned above, WhatsApp is constantly in development, and the instant messaging platform is constantly testing new features, some of which are up to the stable version of WhatsApp and others are on hold. But we hope that some useful features will still be there and land in the stable version.