WhatsApp lets you search messages by date on Android devices

For some reason, messaging app searches continue to fall short. While Facebook Messenger and Apple's Messages have improved, scrolling through irrelevant communications is still necessary to reach the desired message.

WhatsApp outperforms these two chat apps in this category, which is ironic given that Meta owns Messenger. If you use WhatsApp for messaging, you may search for messages by date, both in individual threads and group chats. WhatsApp has long offered this capability on iOS, macOS, and the web app, but now the feature is available for Android users as well. Mark Zuckerberg announced the move via his WhatsApp account. In his example, Zuckerberg looks for a video of a friend singing karaoke from a certain date.

Searching for messages from a specific date should be the same regardless of which platform you use to run WhatsApp. To begin, open a thread or a group chat and tap the contact or group name to get the discussion detail option. Tap the calendar icon that appears, select the particular day you're looking for, and the app will scroll back in time to display messages from that date.

While it would be more handy to be able to search for messages based on a period range rather than a specific date, this is a very helpful tool that we hope more messaging apps would have.