WhatsApp adds four group chat features, including pinning messages permanently

WhatsApp, the social media platform owned by Meta, has announced the rollout of four new features and updates for group chats. The company shared the details in a blog post on Thursday. It claims the features will let new members of a group join an ongoing conversation easily. This means people already in the group will not have to restart the chat from the beginning for new members. According to the company, the features will help users continue a chat from where they left it.

The first change concerns pinning messages. At present, WhatsApp allows a message in any group chat to be pinned for a maximum of 24 hours, seven days or 30 days. Once the new feature is added, users will be able to pin important messages in a group chat permanently.

The second feature is showing old message history to new members. After a new member joins a group, the person will be able to see earlier messages, so the topic under discussion need not be explained again. Group admins and managers will be able to tap on the name of the member who has joined and share recent messages with them. These messages will remain end-to-end encrypted. Earlier, admins could share message history only at the time of adding a member to the group. They will now also have the option of sharing history with members with whom the admin or manager forgot to share it at the start.

The third feature is message filtering. Users will now be able to filter messages in a group chat by mentions. When the filter is applied, all messages in which that user has been tagged will be highlighted in the chat window.

The fourth feature is group status. Users will now be able to share a group status with group members. The status will be shared only with the specific group chats for which it has been posted.