For the second time in a week, WhatsApp has released its beta update, bringing version 2.18.189 to version 2.18.194 through the Google Play beta program. In the last update, it was confirmed that the company will bring group video and voice calling. In this update, the company relaunched an enhanced media visibility feature which was earlier brought in version 2.18.159 but was later removed for unknown reasons.

Previously, users had the option to choose the visibility of shared media across platforms under an umbrella setting. The enhanced feature will now allow users to enable or disable manual media visibility settings for specific chats (s) and groups (s). So if you don’t want those annoying “good morning” forwards to be reflected in your gallery, you can choose to hide them with this feature – subject to the rollout of the feature for the general public.

Beta testers can install the update to review the feature. Open a group or general chat and select ‘Contact Information’ by touching the three dots at the top right of your screen. You may see a new option called ‘Media Visibility’ sandwiched between ‘Custom Notifications’ and ‘Encryption’. (Figure 1)

Formula

As soon as you select it, the following options will pop up and you can choose the option of your choice (Figure 2).

To recap, the beta update for Android (2.18.189) brings both group video and voice chat features to WhatsApp that Facebook announced at its F8 conference this year. WaBetaInfo, a popular website that tests new WhatsApp features before launching to the general public, says that the WhatsApp update will be launched worldwide for Android, iOS as well as Windows Phone users!

In addition to group voice and video calls, WaBetaInfo said, “WhatsApp will also introduce the sticker feature, which is not yet available. WhatsApp has started working on the sticker album feature in the 2.18.120 update (and in response to version 2.18.189), but WhatsApp is keeping it disabled due to developments and will enable it in later releases.

Facebook announced that WhatsApp now has more than 450 million daily users who send 65 billion messages a day and more than 2 billion minutes of video and audio calls per day through the app. In India, there are 200 million monthly active users. WhatsApp is available worldwide in over 50 different languages ​​and 10 Indian languages.