Group chats have been a staple of WhatsApp since being introduced in 2011, offering a near-instant way for everyone from sport clubs to those planning a party to start chatting.
Now, the Meta-owned app has announced a change to make the initial setup of said group chats even more instantaneous.
Previously, upon setting up a group chat, the app would require you to come up with a title for it, with an optional icon. Now, if you choose not to come up with a witty or functional topic for the group, WhatsApp will just create one for you.
You don’t have to worry about it coming up with anything inappropriate, as it’s not hugely sophisticated. WhatsApp takes the simplest and most sensible route available: it just creates a title based on the names of people in the group.
“Making it simpler to start WhatsApp groups by naming them based on who’s in the chat when you don’t feel like coming up with another name,” wrote Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook.
Interestingly, the group names won’t necessarily appear the same for everyone, as it uses the names saved to the contact on your phone. If you’re joining an unnamed group with people you don’t know, their associated phone numbers will appear in the group name instead, which feels a little inelegant and suggests it’s chiefly aimed at friends and family.
Even in these groups, the approach has limits – as it creates names based on the users in a chat group, it’s only designed for smaller ones. The option isn’t available if your chat group has more than six people in it. Still, while WhatsApp supports groups of up to 1,024 participants, this is probably enough for most of them.
The feature will be released globally over the next few weeks, the company said.
