5 Recent WhatsApp Features You Might Have Missed

WhatsApp has become the everyday necessity app for almost everybody in this era. From family group chats to college assignment groups, WhatsApp is a quintessential aspect of our lives now. It has surely grown from a small startup to a company that earns in billions. This is one of the most popular apps in the world with over a billion users. Have you ever found anybody who doesn’t have a WhatsApp account? That’s something very rare. It is one of the most loved apps in the current scenario and one of the go-to apps for all the millennials out there.

Besides being a user-friendly messaging platform, this app has gone out of its way to provide us with convenient features, group chats, WhatsApp voice calls, and video calls as well. It is continuously upgrading itself and bringing in new and intricate features to further ease out our lives. For those of us who have not been that observant or tech-savvy lately, there have been some lesser-known or perhaps hidden features of this prodigious app that we might have missed. You might be using the app all day long and still be unaware of some cool tricks and secret features it hides up under its sleeves.

This article talks about five such features of WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook.

Dark Mode:

This feature has been talked about for over a year now and is finally making its way to both Android and iOS users. A WABetalInfo report states that the feature was made available this February. The Dark Mode feature is in testing mode as of now and users can try this out via the TestFlight beta program. It is primarily available with the WhatsApp update version 2.20. The users who had signed up for WhatsApp’s Beta Program will find this update and be able to activate the feature under the ‘Themes’ option. The finished dark mode will available soon and is in development as of now. It is said that the update is valid for 90 days and will expire after that.

WhatsApp Pay:

The WhatsApp Pay feature, alike the Dark Mode is also available for the beta users in India. This feature has not yet been officially launched on the public WhatsApp application. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that the company will be bringing forth this feature officially for all the users within the upcoming six months.

Fingerprint Lock:

It’s about time that they made WhatsApp more secure because we don’t want people to rummage through our texts. So, they recently introduced the fingerprint lock. Earlier, this was available only on iPhones who used Face ID or Touch ID to unlock their WhatsApp accounts on iOS. Later, this feature was also made available to Android users. Before that, people had to use third-party apps for additional security on WhatsApp. We know that third-party apps can’t always be relied upon and hence, the introduction of this security feature is a relief to all. To activate the fingerprint lock, you just need to tap on More Options, then Settings, Account and then Privacy. Scroll down and tap on Fingerprint lock and enable it by recording your fingerprint. You can answer WhatsApp calls when the app is locked and the feature is available on devices that have a fingerprint sensor running on Android 6.0+.

Typewriter Font:

You must already be well accustomed to the bold, italics and strikethrough fonts which can be easily accessed through a few commands while chatting. Did you know that there is a new typewriter font as well? This is considered as one of the hardest features available. It will need a little more effort but it is worth it. Go ahead and surprise your friends with the typewriter font. You just need to use the symbol ` thrice on either side of the word. For example, “`hello“` and there you go! Don’t confuse the symbol ` with ‘ which is a common mistake for Android users.

Pin Chats:

Yet another intriguing feature is the Pin important chats feature on WhatsApp. Some messages might be much more important to you than the rest of the messages. WhatsApp understood that and so has brought forth this awesome feature. Now, you can pin chats to place them at the top of your WhatsApp chats screen for faster access. How to do that? Simple! The Android users just need to long-press the chat they wish to pin and hit the pin icon for placing the chat right at the top of the screen. iOS users can do this by swiping right on the chat they want to pin and then selecting the pin option.