Published on 06:38 PM, October 24, 2022

Exciting new features for WhatsApp

Have you ever wanted to be invisible to certain individuals on WhatsApp? Not let them know that you are online but be able to text other people at the same time in peace? Well, WhatsApp is finally allowing us to do exactly that.

The popular app that is owned by Meta has been continuously working throughout the years to make the app as secure for users as possible. They have been tinkering with a few new features for a new security campaign for a while now and Head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, has finally revealed them to the audience. He disclosed how the encryption on WhatsApp will now be stronger than ever and the campaign will be dedicated to educate the masses about the importance of end-to-end encryption.

Being able to hide your online status from certain individuals is only the first feature that has been unveiled. Now we can rest easy and not worry about certain people being able to track our online activities. Our parents/bosses will not have to know how late we are up each night, be able to message friends while choosing to ignore other people without them knowing that we are online and avoid drama that starts with "You were online till 5:34am but I messaged you at 4:15am, why didn't you reply?"

Soon, WhatsApp will also give us the ability to leave groups silently without others knowing, thereby giving us more opportunities to avoid even more drama. They will also be introducing a "View Once" feature which will enable us to share messages and media that will disappear after being viewed once from both our phones as well as our digital records. To make this feature even more secure, WhatsApp will also implement screenshot blocking for View Once messages, a step up from Snapchat who only notifies us when a screenshot is taken but doesn't block them.

The people of WhatsApp have confirmed that they will continue to release features like these throughout the next few months. Let's hope they give us the option to edit sent messages like iMessage does.