Early last year, WhatsAppintroduced the Communities featureto make reaching thousands of people a breeze, further elevating it to one of thebest communications appsavailable. However, this also means opening up our inbox and phone number to chats and calls from people we barely know. And it’s already trouble enough dealing with random crypto fanatic group invites. While the service already lets you report and block spammers, there’s currently no way to silence calls from unknown numbers. If you’re looking to get rid of incessant, unwanted calls from complete strangers, you’ll be relieved to hear that WhatsApp is working on a way to mute unknown callers.
As seen in the screenshot below, the toggle for muting calls will be found in the Settings menu. Once enabled, the feature should automatically prevent you from being rung for calls from unknown numbers. However, the calls will still be displayed in the call list and notification center, so you won’t be completely unaware of who tried to reach you.
Spam has beenWhatsApp’s bane for a long time, and it takes many forms, including ads masquerading as useful services. Earlier this year, the service wasspotted testing a quick way to block spam messages. While WhatsApp has a feature for addressing spam messages and calls that have already reached you, avoiding them has proven difficult.
The mute toggle is apparently under development for the time being and seen as a viable solution to WhatsApp’s spam problems. Unfortunately, it is unknown when Meta-owned messaging platform will make it available to everyone. It will presumably need to go through some degree of public beta testing beforehand.
Given the high volume of spam and unwanted calls on WhatsApp, we’d bet many of you will be curious to give this feature a shot.
