Facebook's WhatsApp company is set to launch new updates for its Android and iOS apps that will bring dramatic changes to the world's most popular instant messaging app, which has around 1.6 billion users.
These updates have moved from a few months' development phase to testing by users, but may take time to reach everyone, and include the following key benefits:
Hide silent cases
WhatsApp has allowed the user to mute some contacts for some time, but silent updates still appear in the gray status tab in a separate section below all other status updates, and in the trial version the user can completely hide silent cases and no longer appear to him.
Align images
This feature is borrowed from WhatsApp from Instagram - also owned by Facebook - where it aligns images, emoji, stickers and text, including images and animated gifs, so that it looks good when posting a status update with other photos or media.
Dark style
This feature, which has been tested by the company for a long time, turns the application and texts into black and white for better comfort while reading at night.
Boomerang
Boomerang, which has also been tested, allows users to play the video repeatedly without stopping.
Share the status as a Facebook story
This long-awaited feature allows users to share their status update to Facebook stories. A new button will appear to users under the Status tab on WhatsApp after creating an update titled “Share Facebook Story.”
Integrate Google's "Assistent" Smart Assistant with the app
Google's intelligent voice assistant will be integrated into WhatsApp for iOS, once users are restricted to sharing text messages only via Google Assist.
The new feature, already available to Android users, allows users to make voice or video calls with voice commands directed to Google's smart assistant, such as "Hi Google, WhatsApp video (person's name)".
Bug fixes
Along with these and other features, the update will fix several bugs and fill the gaps.