Three big changes are coming to WhatsApp later this month, and Irish users are set to be affected by the new features.
The messaging app, owned by Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the most popular in the country, allowing people to keep connected with friends, family, sports clubs and other social groups.
In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg said: "We'll keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations.”
These new updates join WhatsApp’s long list of privacy features that users can take advantage of including end-to-end encryption, block and report, two-step verification, end-to-end encrypted backups, disappearing messages, and more.
These three new ones are sure to be quite popular.
Leave Groups Silently
We've all had the worry about leaving a particularly annoying group - you know the ones that have messages every five seconds.
Well, good news if you were concerned about how the group might take it.
Users will be able to exit a group privately without having to notify everyone.
Now, instead of notifying the full group when leaving, only the admins will be notified.
This feature starts to roll out to all users this month.
Choose Who Can See When You’re Online
Seeing when friends or family are online helps us feel connected to one another, but we’ve all had times when we wanted to check our WhatsApp privately.
It's helpful to take these breaks, and now Meta are trying to give us a helping hand that way too.
For the times you want to keep your online presence private, they're introducing the ability to select who can and can’t see when you’re online.
This will start rolling out to all users this month.
Screenshot Blocking for View Once Messages
WhatsApp brought in a popular change last year with the introduction of 'View Once' messages - texts and photos which you could set to be seen just a single time before the record was wiped.
But people took advantage by screenshotting these texts and photos - that won't be happening anymore.
Now Meta are enabling screenshot blocking for View Once messages for an added layer of protection. They're testing this feature now and look forward to rolling it out to users soon.
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