WhatsApp is adding new useful features for groups

The rate of adding new features to WhatsApp has increased exponentially in recent months, proof that Meta is taking the increase in competition in messaging services very seriously. To illustrate, in late 2022 it improved the group chat experience, and in the last two months it added support for proxy servers, enhanced status updates and launched WhatsApp Communities to the general public.

In the present day, the company is giving group chat administrators (the groups) even more control over participants. The next time you share an invitation link to a group chat, administrators will be able to manually approve new users to join the group, even if it's a group created within a Community.

Also, all WhatsApp users will be able to see very easily which are the shared groups they are participating in with other contacts. This will be done with a simple search by contact name and WhatsApp will display a list of all the shared groups in the results. It may sound like a small addition, however, it is particularly useful if you participate in many groups of different interests (e.g. work, trips, gym).

Meta says that the launch of the new features is being phased in for WhatsApp apps on Android and iOS devices, so it may take a few days to see them.

Finally, the company is testing more features in the beta version of WhatsApp, such as automatic blocking of unknown numbers and Unicode 15.0 emoji support.