WhatsApp introduces 'favorites' for quick access to contacts and groups

WhatsApp had recently rolled out chat filters that enables people to find important messages faster, without having to scroll through their entire inbox.

WhatsApp on July 16 introduced 'favorites' -- a feature that allows people to quickly access their favourite contacts at the top of the calls tab and as a filter for text messages.

WhatsApp said it started rolling out the feature on July 16 and will be available to all users in the coming weeks.

To add a contact or a group to the favourites list, users can select the 'favorites' filter from the chat screen and choose the desired contact or the group. One can also tap on the ‘Add Favorite’ option and select the specific contact or group from the calls tab.

These 'favourites' will be the same across the user's chats and calls. People can manage their favourites from the app setting and reorder them at any time, WhatsApp said.

WhatsApp said favorites will be the same across the user's chats and calls. People can manage them from the app settings and reorder them at any time (Image source: WhatsApp)

This feature comes three months after WhatsApp rolled out chat filters that enable people to find important messages faster, without having to scroll through their entire inbox.

It had initially introduced three filters that appeared at the top of their chat list, namely, 'All', 'Unread', and 'Groups'. The "All" filter will be the default view, showing users all their messages in the inbox.

The "Unread" filter shows messages that are either marked by the user as unread or haven't been opened yet while the "Groups" filter organises all the group chats in a single place. At the time, WhatsApp had said that it will launch more options in the future that will help users navigate through messages more efficiently.

In June, WhatsApp had also enhanced its video calling experience across desktop and mobile devices with a range of improvements, including increasing the limit of participants on a group video call on desktop to 32 people and enabling users to share their audio while sharing their screen.

Another key addition was 'Speaker Spotlight' that automatically highlights the person talking on the video call and makes them appear first on the screen.

WhatsApp parent Meta also said that it recently launched Meta Low (MLow) Bitrate audio codec to improve the reliability of calls and audio quality even on poor networks. Prior to this, Meta used an open-source codec Opus that was released in 2012.

With MLow, calls made on mobile devices will have improved noise and echo cancellation, making it easier for people to make calls in noisy environments. Audio will also be crisper overall, even if the user is facing poor network connectivity or is using an older device, the company said.

Users with faster connections will also have higher resolution in video calls. Meta said that MLow has already been made available for all Instagram and Messenger calls and the company is now actively rolling it out on WhatsApp.