“We’ve made dark mode even darker to make text easier to read. Similarly, we’ve added more white space to the app when in light mode,” it added.<\/p>\n
The update also shifted the Chat, Status, Call, Communities, and Settings tabs from the top of the screen to the bottom.<\/p>\n
“Everyone who uses WhatsApp will eventually receive this update, so it’s not something you can opt out of,” says WhatsApp.<\/p>\n
Meta rolled out its AI assistant to WhatsApp<\/a> in April 2024. The assistant can answer questions, create animations, and generate images.<\/p>\n The AI assistant is built into WhatsApp’s search bar so users can easily ask questions and use its generative features.<\/p>\n For example, Meta said users can ask the AI assistant to recommend restaurants or help plan a vacation, among other things.<\/p>\n Meta also launched WhatsApp AI for Businesses to make it easier for users to find the information they require.<\/p>\n “This includes the possibility for certain businesses to incorporate AI services from Meta into their conversations, simplifying customer inquiry management through AI integration,” specialist WhatsApp data mining publication WABetaInfo reported.<\/p>\n To safeguard user privacy, WhatsApp has started blocking screenshots of users’ profile pictures. This adds a layer of protection by preventing the sharing of user photos without their consent.<\/p>\n It will also help to reduce the potential for misusing profile photos.<\/p>\n “In some cases, users may use others’ profile photos for malicious purposes, such as impersonation or harassment,” WABetaInfo reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n “By restricting the ability to take screenshots of profile photos, WhatsApp can mitigate the risk of these photos being misused or distributed without the owner’s consent.”<\/p>\n WhatsApp’s redesigned user interface for Android and iOS<\/p><\/div>\n WhatsApp’s device-linking feature lets users access their accounts on various device types. However, until recently, there was no way to lock chats on a linked device when it wasn’t in use.<\/p>\n Meta addressed the issue and started working on a solution in February 2024 that would let users set a secret code to lock chats across devices.<\/p>\n “When a chat is locked on the main device, it will automatically lock on all other linked devices for added privacy,” said<\/a> WABetaInfo.<\/p>\n Roughly a month later, the company rolled out two additional security features: passkeys and a system to show when messages are end-to-end encrypted.<\/p>\n A beta version of the app for iOS showed that users had the ability to configure a passkey to secure their WhatsApp accounts.<\/p>\n Once configured in iOS, the passkey is automatically saved to the iCloud Keychain, enabling users to log into WhatsApp with their device passcode or Face ID.<\/p>\n When a user needs to log into WhatsApp on a device where the passkey isn’t available, they can authenticate using the traditional six-digit lock code.<\/p>\n The new end-to-end encryption indicator shows a caption at the top of chats to show when a conversation is end-to-end encrypted.<\/p>\n “With this enhancement, users are always aware when their chats are securely encrypted using the Signal protocol, serving as a visual confirmation that nobody can read their messages and listen to their calls,” says WABetaInfo.<\/p>\n Meta has also rolled out several quality-of-life and personalisation changes since the start of the year, including a new sticker editor<\/a>, favourite contacts<\/a>, AI-powered photo editing<\/a>, voice note transcriptions<\/a>, and chat filters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WhatsApp’s development team has been hard at work in 2024, launching various new updates and features for the platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":516123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17934],"tags":[11941,35,74560,2594],"class_list":["post-541723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-smartphones","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-headline","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541907,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541723\/revisions\/541907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/new-layout-WhatsApp.jpg\")