ANDROIDIOS

WhatsApp is developing a Linked Accounts feature, Vacation and Silent Modes!

In these months, WhatsApp was working on a new feature to improve chats and notifications.
The most recent news about notifications includes the support for the new Notification Extension to see Media Preview in the notification, but WhatsApp is silently working to add a new feature for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, that’s currently under development.
In this article I also talk about other two new features! Let’s see them!

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ATTENTION:

  • The Vacation Mode is a feature under development.
    WhatsApp is working on this feature in these months and it’s not available yet for development reasons: the feature needs to get many other improvements before to be enabled for everyone.
    For this reason, it’s ok if you have updated your WhatsApp version and it’s not working for you seen that the feature is under development.
  • The Vacation Mode is based on the Silent Mode, that’s already available on Android today.
  • The Linked Accounts feature isn’t currently available yet.

VACATION MODE 🏖🍹

Something is coming soon for all WhatsApp platforms, that will offer to users a new exclusive feature: it is called Vacation Mode!
Currently, when you archive a chat, WhatsApp automatically unarchives it once a new message is received from that chat.
Thanks to the Vacation Mode feature, things are going to change soon for archived chats: when the feature is enabled from your WhatsApp Notification Settings, archived chats won’t be unarchived if you have previously muted them!

As above mentioned, the option will be available in WhatsApp Settings (for IOS, Android and Windows Phone in future), then Notifications.

Enabling Vacation Mode, muted archived chats won’t be unarchived until you will unmute or unarchive them, so this is something users are asking since WhatsApp has added the Archive Chat feature.
For example, you can use this option for your muted groups, that’s one of the main reasons the feature has been developed: archiving a muted group, thanks to the Vacation mode, it’s like if the group chat was sleeping in the archive, so it will be never unarchived. 💤
The Vacation mode is also useful if you don’t want a specific chat in your Chats List: if you mute and archive it, you will never see it again, except if you view your Archived Chats.
You see above a screenshot from WhatsApp for iOS (and it’s not available yet), but don’t worry: the feature will be also available for Android in future, because it will be based on the Silent Mode.

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SILENT MODE

WhatsApp has just enabled a new feature for Android, that allows to hide the app badge for muted chats. Yes, it’s already enabled for everyone!
Some launchers support app badge that reports the number of new received messages.
Sometimes, it was very annoyed to see the badge for a muted chat (you notice the app badge, you open WhatsApp but you just see muted chats..), but finally thanks to this feature, you will never see the badge when you receive a message from muted chats and groups!
The feature is already enabled by default, it means there isn’t an option in Settings you need to enable in order to activate it.

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LINKED ACCOUNTS

WhatsApp is working right now on a new feature that allows to link your account with external services.
The feature appears mainly developed for WhatsApp Business, but some references were found in the normal WhatsApp app too. It’s not available yet for both apps.
The Linked Accounts option will be located under your Profile Settings:

Currently, the first supported external service is Instagram. Tapping Instagram, after inserting your credentials, your WhatsApp account will be correctly linked to your Instagram profile.

The purpose of the linking is actually unknown, but some weeks ago I spotted this news on Twitter:

Currently, we have two possibilities:

  • The Linked Accounts feature will help the user to recover the password.
  • It will allow to automatically share your status updates in Instagram (that’s very useful for Businesses).

Stay tuned to learn more!

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