5 new features coming soon to WhatsApp: From Communities to emoji reactions

WhatsApp will soon roll out Communities and other features.

WhatsApp has announced five new features that will soon be introduced to its 2 billion users - with the biggest of these being the launch of ‘Communities’. The Meta-owned messaging service confirmed that it is testing a new feature called Communities, which will make it easier to manage WhatsApp groups. Communities is among the most-anticipated changes coming to WhatsApp, but there are four other features that will also be rolled out soon.

Here is all you need to know about the five new features coming soon to WhatsApp:

Communities

Today we’re very excited to share our vision for a feature we’re calling WhatsApp Communities. This is new functionality we’re building to support the many organizations that use WhatsApp to communicate in a private and secure way. pic.twitter.com/LxEccdgJq8

— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) April 14, 2022

Communities will make WhatsApp more useful for larger organisations that use the platform. “This is new functionality we’re building to support the many organizations that use WhatsApp to communicate in a private and secure way,” Cathcart said.

In a blog post, WhatsApp said the pandemic has forced more and more people to rely on the messaging service to communicate. Communities will allow people to bring separate groups together.

Reactions

We’re excited to announce that reactions are coming to WhatsApp starting with ️ and with all emojis and skin-tones to come. pic.twitter.com/086JnVS5Ey

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— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) April 14, 2022

Another highly-requested feature will also be rolled out on WhatsApp soon. People will be able to react to messages with emojis. This will allow users to acknowledge a message in group chats without flooding chats with new messages.

This feature will initially allow people to react with five emojis - thumbs up, red heart, laughing, surprised, sad and high-five. “All emojis and skin-tones to come,” Cathcart confirmed.

Admin Delete

Before Communities are launched, WhatsApp is making a number of improvements to group chats. Soon, group admins will have more power - including the power to delete group members’ messages. This functionality will allow admins to remove errant or problematic messages from everyone’s chats.

File Sharing

To make for easier collaboration on projects, WhatsApp is increasing file sharing to support files up to 2 gigabytes. Currently, the maximum size for sharing files is capped at 100 MB. The new feature will take that to 2 GB.

Larger Voice Calls

Given that a number of people are now using WhatsApp for meetings, this service will introduce voice calling for up to 32 people.