Meta launched Chat Lock last week to ensure private conversations. The company is also working on multiple updates in a short amount of time. Recently, the company introduced single-vote polls to prevent people from skewing results with multiple votes.
The beta feature is not available to everyone. Only a handful of users have received this feature. WhatsApp will make this feature available in a future update. Let’s see what’s coming with the updated WhatsApp. Without further ado, let’s check it out.
Edit Sent Message
The company has been testing a new feature for several months and is now rolling it out to everyone. The feature allows users to edit messages they have sent within 15 minutes of sending them. The edited message will be marked as edited, but recipients will still be able to see it. This gives users more control over their chats and improves the messaging experience.
The feature is available on both Android and iOS, making it more convenient for users to correct mistakes or add extra content to their messages. The company announced the feature and warns that edited messages will not be stored in the chat’s edit history, so users may not be able to see the original text once it is edited.
To edit a message, simply long-press on it and select “Edit” from the menu. Type your message, and the edited message will show “Edited” next to it. This feature is similar to iMessage Editing on iOS 16. The feature is rolling out gradually and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.
Message Draft
This new feature is now rolling out to the Windows Native app through the official Beta channel on Microsoft Store. You can identify this build as 2.2319.4.0. The update enhances support for message drafts, so after installing it, users will have improved support for message drafts.
The draft indicator will help users notice when they have a message draft in progress within a conversation. The company has been experimenting with improving support for message drafts after users reported the problem of losing important messages.
The new update introduces a draft indicator to address this issue. Enhanced support for message drafts is available for some users who install the WhatsApp Beta for Windows. Chats with unsent draft messages will now be marked with a green label called “Draft,” which prioritizes conversations with draft messages by moving them to the top of the chat list.
This ensures that users don’t overlook their draft messages and draws attention to their presence. It also fixes the common issue of users forgetting about partially composed messages within a conversation. The “Draft” label is strategically placed on top of the chat list, providing a good solution that makes it easier for users to notice, resume, and send their unfinished messages.
Password Reminder
This is a new feature that helps users verify their password for their encrypted backups in Beta for iOS and Android. Two years ago, the company launched end-to-end encrypted backups, which allow users to secure their backup using a personal password or 64-bit encryption key. This functionality restricts Apple and Google from reading the encrypted backups or accessing the unlocking key.
Previously, WhatsApp used its own encryption techniques for backups, but they were not end-to-end encrypted. However, after the end-to-end encryption on backups, some users encountered that they don’t remember the password they had chosen. To address this issue, the company has developed a feature that allows users to verify their password is correct and the password reminder will help to verify if their password is correct and replace or disable it if necessary. You can reactivate the security feature with a new password or 64-digit key, but users will lose their previously encrypted chat history.
This password reminder feature for encrypted backup on Google Drive and iCloud will prompt users to enter the password they chose for encrypting their password. This prompt serves as a reminder to confirm that the password is correct, and it may appear automatically on certain occasions and users can’t manually trigger it. Similarly, the feature already verifies the 6-digit code used for two-step verification.
This feature is important because it’s not possible to restore chat history after reinstalling WhatsApp due to a forgotten password. It is expected to roll out over the coming weeks.
Sticker Marker Tool
WhatsApp has released a new update (version 23.10.0.74) for iOS devices via the TestFlight Beta Program. The update allows users to create stickers within the app. Previously, the company released a feature that let users create stickers with their own images. This feature provides editing tools, including the ability to remove the background, and aims to offer a more native experience for creating stickers within WhatsApp.
The new sticker feature is accessible through the Chat Share action and is labeled as “New Sticker.” The feature is still under development and uses iOS 16 APIs to extract the subject from an image and automatically convert it into a sticker in the app. The company is continuing to improve the feature and aims to offer better implementation for creating stickers from images.
Currently, there are many third-party applications that allow users to create stickers from images, and GBoard also has this feature, which allows users to create stickers on WhatsApp. A similar feature is already available in WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Desktop, but the iOS version will offer additional tools, and in-app stickers are still in development.
