3 new features coming soon to WhatsApp, message self-destruction and more

WhatsApp is not entirely unknown to smartphone users. With over 2 billion active users worldwide, it has become the most popular messaging app on the market. The reason why most users tend to resort to WhatsApp, leaving other messaging applications, is the frequent inclusion of new features.

We previously saw the platform bring the “Advanced Search” feature to its app. Now, the Facebook-owned messaging platform will bring more new features to the app very soon.

So let me tell you all about these new features that are coming to the messaging platform in the next updates.

3 new features coming soon to WhatsApp

self-destructive messages

Since the end of 2019, we started to see evidence suggesting that WhatsApp will bring Telegram-style self-destruct messages to the platform. The story became more reliable at the end of November, when we saw the feature in a beta version of WhatsApp.

However, the feature did not make it to the public version. Now, the Facebook-owned messaging platform is finally bringing the feature to the public version of the app.

This feature will allow users to set a self-destruct timer for messages in individual chats or group chats. After the specified timer expires, the messages will be automatically removed from the chats.

This ephemeral messaging system is a common feature in messaging apps like Telegram and is essentially provided for privacy needs.

Password protection for chat backups

Currently WhatsApp chat backup option backs up chats to Google Drive without any protection.

However, that is about to change with future updates. According to reports, the messaging platform will provide password protection for chat backups. The feature was spotted in an earlier version of the app and essentially allows users to set a password/pin on their chat backups to ensure their privacy.

This will encrypt the backups, which, in turn, will prevent Facebook or WhatsApp from seeing the content of your chats.

New rules for automatic media download

Now, one of the biggest annoyances of WhatsApp is the huge amount of forwarded messages that we get in the app. The platform recently launched a feature that limits message forwarding to prevent the spread of false information.

Now the app will provide an additional auto download feature that will restrict the app from downloading anything and all forwarded messages. This feature will certainly save a lot of space on users' devices., as forwarded messages often come with multimedia attachments, which are automatically downloaded to a user's device.

Apart from the above, WhatsApp is testing some more useful features for its messaging platform. We previously saw the “verify forwarded messages” feature coming to combat the spread of misinformation.

There is another feature that is rumored to be coming to the app. Although users can use one WhatsApp account on multiple desktops or laptops through WhatsApp Web, the app does not allow the user to log in to more than one mobile phone with the same account.

However, that may change with support for multiple devices, as it will allow users to log in on different mobile phones, using the same account.