Communities on WhatsApp have been around for a while now, helping users or organizations with several members to manage their conversations more efficiently. The Meta-owned chat app was recently found working on allowingcommunity members to create and schedule events. Well, WhatsApp is now working on another communities-related attribute, aimed at protecting the privacy of certain groups.
What is WhatsApp Communities and how do I use it?
Organize all your WhatsApp Groups in one place with Communities
WhatsApp beta for Androidversion 2.24.9.27lets administrators hide specific groups from other community members, as revealed byWABetaInfo. Community group admins should be able to hide a group chat by navigating to the chat info page and scrolling down to findGroup permissions. Here, a new option on top namedGroup visibilityhas surfaced, accompanied by a toggle to mark it as aHidden group. This is followed by the rest of the admin controls that are currently available,such as who can edit group settings, send messages, etc.
WABetaInfo points out that while admins will still be able to add or remove groups from the community, they won’t have any control over the hidden group unless they’re also members of the said group. Unfortunately, the feature doesn’t appear to be widely rolling out to the beta testers just yet, even when v2.24.9.27 is installed on theirAndroid smartphone. But given the usefulness of setting up secret chats within large communities, we expect this to eventually reach the stable version of WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is also working on a Quick Share alternative
Outside of WhatsApp Communities, the chat app continues to build on under-development features likePeople nearby, a file sharing tool that wasfirst spotted earlier this year. Last week, arevised version of People nearbymade it to WhatsApp beta, giving us a good look at what could well be the final design of this new file transfer solution.
Nearby Share is dead, long live Quick Share
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Users will be able to send photos, videos, and files to people who are in their vicinity, without sharing personal details like their phone number. It’s unclear what led WhatsApp to work on this tool, especially when mobile platforms like Android and iOS already have similar solutions baked into the system.
