WhatsApp groups are perennial problems for many of us. We often get added to inadvertent groups, possibly with once-friends whom we haven’t spoken to in ages, and have literally nothing in common with. Naturally, our instinctive first reaction to being aded to these groups is to mute them for as long as we can – for one year, as what is allowed by WhatsApp. Now, though, most users will be happy to note that WhatsApp is testing a beta feature that may soon allow us to mute these pesky, annoying WhatsApp groups… forever.
The update has been spotted by WABetaInfo as an upcoming beta feature on the latest update to WhatsApp for Android beta app. According to the shared screenshot, while the option to mute a group for eight hours or one week would likely remain, the one year option seems set to be replaced by an option to mute a group forever. This will most likely make more sense, since when we mute a group for a year, it is to not be bothered by notifications from the group at any point of time in the future. If we do want to receive messages from any of these groups, we always have the choice to unmute the group. The same would apply for the ‘mute always’ setting, too.
WhatsApp is one of the most well-equipped messaging apps in the world, and certainly the most popular around the world. With over 2 billion users globally, WhatsApp is used for a wide range of purposes – by offices for internal team communications, students and teachers, business promotions and in its focus group – personal usage. To improve the overall messaging experience, WhatsApp has taken a number of steps such as improved spam detection, end to end encryption, better message search, dark mode, group invitation restrictions and more. The new feature to allow people to mute groups forever is likely a step in this direction too. According to WABetaInfo, this feature is presently labelled as ‘under development’, and is most probably going to be seen in the stable builds after an update in the near future.
WhatsApp’s biggest feature update of 2020 is expected to be support for linking one account to multiple devices, which has been recently spotted in beta as well. The feature will finally let you run your primary WhatsApp account on more than one phone, as well as integrating the existing support for WhatsApp’s desktop apps. Being an elaborate feature, this option is likely to appear towards the end of 2020.
