WhatsApp is adding a new feature that gives users the ability to leave a group chat without notifying other group members. Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post today that users should expect to see new privacy features on the Meta-owned app.
“We’ll keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations,” said Zuckerberg.
WhatsApp is giving users more control over their conversations and adding layers of protection when messaging.
As you’re aware you cannot exit a WhatsApp group without everyone being notified. Now, instead of notifying everyone in the group when a person leaves WhatsApp says only the admins will notice.
With the admin(s) being notified they can still message you privately to ask why you left. So it makes sense to say that your decision to “exit the group” isn’t completely private.
The CEO also announced the company is rolling out a way to hide your “last seen” status from specific contacts. The Instant messaging app will soon lets you appear offline (or hide your online status) to some contacts.
Once enabled, other users will no longer see the “Online” tag under your name/phone number in chats, even when you are online and using WhatsApp actively.
When the feature is live, you will need to activate it in the Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen. Here, you will find the newly added “Who can see when I’m online” option. The screenshot below displays what the WhatsApp update will look like.
It is already possible to hide your ‘Last seen’ status from specific contacts. The new privacy feature further builds on that by letting you specify which contacts can see your ‘Last seen’ to hide your online status.
WhatsApp says it’ll start rolling out these two features this month, and that it’s also working on a way to block users from taking screenshots of “view once” messages.
The Meta-owned app has been aggressively testing and adding new features to its platform. Yesterday it announced a new feature where you now have a little over two days to delete a “sent” message instead of just one hour.
Close to the end of last month, it started testing a new feature that makes it easy for group admins the moderate their WhatsApp groups in a better way. This new feature was spotted by WABetInfo and it gives admins the permission to delete any message for everyone.
