Tag: WhatsApp

Android Community

WhatsApp just upgraded Communities for everyone

Summary

  • WhatsApp has expanded to include Channels and Communities for mass communication, similar to Discord and Slack.
  • Users can now organize events in Communities, allowing for coordinated virtual meetings and simplified event management.
  • More features, like allowing participation in the Announcements channel, are also on the way for WhatsApp Communities.



An expansion from small-scale individual and group messaging got WhatsApp well past the billion-user milestone, but under Meta leadership, the brand has been working on expanding its appeal in a direction which Discord and Telegram has already forayed — mass communication. WhatsApp’s Channels for one-to-many messaging and Communities for harboring topical group chats have been reasonably successful. Now, Meta is enhancing their abilities with additions like the ability to organize events in communities.


The WhatsApp logo on top of a photo of a group of people
Related
What is WhatsApp Communities and how do I use it?

Organize all your WhatsApp Groups in one place with Communities

WhatsApp introduced Communities as a tool to encourage people with shared interests to collect sporadic groups under one umbrella called a Community, just the way Discord has channels within servers and Slack offers Channels within Workspaces. Besides suitable admin tools and an Announcements channel where only community administrators can post messages, the new addition didn’t offer much in the way of standout features. That’s changing now because Meta just made Community events official.


Coordinated virtual event management, simplified

WhatsApp-community-events-official-hero

Source: Meta


We caught wind of WhatsApp’s plans for announcing the events feature last month, alongside a few other changes to help communities unlock their true potential. Starting with events, Meta says any community member can create an event and other participants can confirm attendance in advance, so everyone in the group would know who plans to attend, much like Google Meet invitations sent out via email. Events will show up on the group information page, and

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Android Community

WhatsApp Communities could soon make managing events easier

Summary

  • WhatsApp is testing an event scheduling feature for communities, allowing users to create and manage events within group chats easily.
  • Members will automatically receive notifications for new events and can review details, accept invites, and receive reminders before events start.
  • The feature could extend to regular group chats, providing a valuable tool for organizing online classes or events directly within the app.



WhatsApp was spotted working on an event scheduling feature since October 2023. A follow-up report from March this year detailed how the feature will work and the improvements Meta has made to event scheduling since 2023. It appears WhatsApp is ready to start trialing the feature, as it has popped up for some beta testers on the latest WhatsApp beta for Android.


The WhatsApp logo on top of a photo of a group of people
Related
What is WhatsApp Communities and how do I use it?

Organize all your WhatsApp Groups in one place with Communities

According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp will soon allow you to create new events within a community. Given that a typical community consists of tens (or hundreds) of people, an event scheduling feature would make organizing meetings or events more manageable.

Event scheduling in WhatsApp

The option to create a new event will appear in WhatsApp’s attachment menu within a community chat. You can then enter the event’s name, date, time, and optionally, location. There’s also a toggle to attach a WhatsApp call link, which you can then specify whether it’s a video or voice call.


Once an event is created, all community members will automatically receive a notification. They can then review and accept the invite. The event creator can modify the event details later. However, this will again notify all community members who have accepted the event invitation.

All events created in a community will be accessible from the group info and the community pages. This will

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Android Community

WhatsApp could soon let Community admins hide their groups from the public eye

Summary

  • WhatsApp is enhancing Communities by letting admins hide specific groups from view for privacy.
  • Admins can mark groups as hidden within the community, giving them more control over who can see them.
  • WhatsApp is also developing a Quick Share alternative to let users easily media and files with people around them.



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 allowing community members to create and schedule events. Well, WhatsApp is now working on another communities-related attribute, aimed at protecting the privacy of certain groups.


The WhatsApp logo on top of a photo of a group of people
Related
What is WhatsApp Communities and how do I use it?

Organize all your WhatsApp Groups in one place with Communities

WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.24.9.27 lets administrators hide specific groups from other community members, as revealed by WABetaInfo. Community group admins should be able to hide a group chat by navigating to the chat info page and scrolling down to find Group permissions. Here, a new option on top named Group visibility has surfaced, accompanied by a toggle to mark it as a Hidden 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.

WhatsApp Android Hidden Community Groups


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 their Android smartphone. But given the usefulness of setting up secret chats within large communities, we expect this to eventually

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Android Community

WhatsApp will make Community announcement groups more interactive

WhatsApp Communities are a great way for users to keep all of their chat groups organized. While they’re a great platform for mutual communications between admins and members, that’s not the case with the announcement groups. However,. WhatsApp is working on a feature that will bring replies to Community announcement groups. This comes after the company announced cross-platform messaging.

In case you don’t know what WhatsApp Communities are, this is a feature that allows you to create and manage multiple chat groups under one umbrella. You can create up to 50 chat groups that you can place under it. Think of it as Discord for WhatsApp. There can be different group admins for these groups and you can place these groups under different categories. It’s a great way for people running large organizations that need multiple chat groups to sustain.

WhatsApp Communities will allow for replies in the Community announcement groups

This feature was discovered by WABetaInfo. It exists in the WhatsApp beta version 2.24.4.12 for Android. If you have that version of the app, there’s still a chance that you will not see the feature. So, update your app to the latest version and see if you are one of the lucky ones.

Within a community’s chat groups, people can chat amongst themselves. This includes both members and admins. However, Communities can have an Announcement group. The announcement group acts like a Channel. It’s a group where everyone can view messages, but only one person can post, and that’s the creator of the community. This is a group that allows you to broadcast updates to everyone.

Well, it appears that WhatsApp wants to bring some more interaction with your Community announcement group. According to a new report, WhatsApp is readying a feature that will let people actually reply

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Android Community

WhatsApp Communities could make tracking events much easier

Summary

  • WhatsApp beta for Android introduces automatically pinned events in Communities, saving users the hassle of manually pinning upcoming events.
  • Meanwhile, the events functionality within community groups has been under development since last year and hasn’t fully rolled out to beta testers yet.
  • Separately, a new marker notifying users of end-to-end encryption has been added to WhatsApp, although its necessity is debatable due to existing encryption verification features.


WhatsApp has been quite busy with feature additions over the last few years. The platform announced the broader rollout of Communities in late 2022, while Channels became available globally last September. While the latter has seen a handful of feature additions over the last several weeks, we’ve not seen Communities getting a lot of upgrades.

But that’s changing with the latest beta of WhatsApp for Android (v2.24.3.20), which contains a handy addition to Communities — automatically pinned events. This builds on an October 2023 beta update, which first showed hints of the events functionality coming to community group chats. We also reported on the same beta version introducing a redesigned Ul to the chat app.

A screenshot of the community group pinned events on WhatsApp beta for Android

Since the process is automatic, group members/admins won’t need to manually pin an upcoming event for everybody’s attention. WABetaInfo reports that events are automatically pinned whenever a community member sets one up, with the event appearing on top of the community info screen.

It’s worth mentioning here that the events functionality is not widely available on the beta channel yet, so it’s been stuck in development since last year. This explains why I wasn’t able to set up an event within a community despite being on the latest version of WhatsApp beta for Android.

Nevertheless, the fact that WhatsApp is working on automatically pinned events suggests that events are going to be a big

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Android Google

Android users will soon have to sacrifice Google Drive storage to keep WhatsApp Chat backups

A graphical representation of WhatsApp

The social media giant, WhatsApp, is switching things up for Android users. According to a recent news report, WhatsApp users will have to sacrifice a portion of their Google Drive storage to continue backups.

Highlighted by GizmoChina, the meta-owned platform is no longer going to provide the free storage service on Google Drive to users. Previously, users were given the benefits of having end-to-end encrypted chat backups on Google Drive.

These backups did not take a toll on the users’ existing Google Drive storage. However, with the latest company policy changes in place the situation has changed.

Individuals who are currently using the default 15GB storage by Google Drive will now need to be careful about their storage. WhatsApp wrote in its Help Center post that once a user exceeds the given storage limit, they will have to make space for new content to resume the backups.

Here’s what the post mentions:

“In the coming months, if you choose to backup your WhatsApp chats on an Android device, your backup will start counting toward your Google Account storage limit.
If you go over the storage limit, you’ll need to free up space in your Google Account to resume backups.”

The change is currently only for beta users of WhatsApp and began in December 2023. However, to remind all non-beta users, the changes will be applicable on all WhatsApp accounts in the first half of 2024.

Additionally, the app will show a notice notifying users of when the changes will begin. This will appear as a banner 30 days before the implementation of the policy when users go to Settings > Chats > Chat backup.

Lastly, it is important to note that users have the option not to store their chats on Google Drive. Instead, they can transfer their chats

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