WhatsApp Group History Sharing Feature in the Works; Mark Zuckerberg Announces Automatic Group Naming

WhatsApp is working on a feature that could improve the experience of a user joining an existing group on the popular messaging app. A feature tracker has shared details of a new WhatsApp setting that will show up to 24 hours of messages from the group, before a member was added to the chat. The feature can only be enabled by group administrators (or admins) and will help provide context about recent messages to newly added members. Meanwhile, Meta’s CEO has announced a new feature that will eliminate the hassle of naming new groups on WhatsApp.

According to WABetaInfo, a WhatsApp feature tracker, the Meta-owned messaging service is currently working on a feature titled “Recent History Sharing”. Spotted on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.18.5, the feature will display chats sent to the group by existing members, up to 24 hours before a user joins the group.

Existing group members will be informed that the feature has been enabled
Photo Credit: WABetaInfo

It is worth noting that this feature is still in development, which means that beta testers can’t try it out on the latest testing version of WhatsApp — and there’s no word on when it could eventually roll out to all users. The popular messaging platform is currently rolling out the recently announced Channels feature that allows users to see up to 30 days of previous messages when they join a new channel. Unlike a channel, the recent history sharing functionality for groups offers a shorter window of 24 hours.

As previously mentioned, the setting can only be enabled by a group admin, and WABetaInfo says that existing members will see a message informing them that the feature has been turned on. An image shared by the feature tracker shows a smaller message in the chat — presumably displayed using reverse engineering — that confirms recent history sharing has been turned on for new participants.

Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday announced that the messaging app was rolling out a feature that would automatically use participant names for a new group chat in order to eliminate the need to think of a group name when creating a new one on WhatsApp. The feature was illustrated in a screenshot shared by Zuckerberg.

The new automatic group naming feature should be available to users on all platforms, and Gadgets 360 was able to confirm that it was working on the latest beta version of WhatsApp for Android but not on the iOS version of the app. Users can expect the feature to roll out to the app on their smartphones over the coming weeks.