What you need to know
- WhatsApp is working on a ‘Favorites’ feature, which will allow users to separate their most important conversations from the main chat list.
- The favorites are expected to sit in a separate tab that can be easily accessed.
- This feature is currently in development, with no definitive timescale on a rollout to all WhatsApp Web users.
WhatsApp is one of the most widely-used chat apps around, with billions of people making use of its services worldwide. Its popularity stems from its ease of use, its security, and the fact that it’s free.
But WhatsApp isn’t resting on its laurels, with regular updates to its UI and features in order to keep it as relevant as possible. These range from blocking spam messages without having to open them to rumors of a new file-sharing feature in development. Added to these is a new favorite contacts filter feature, which has been spotted by WABetaInfo and is currently being developed for the WhatsApp Web client.
Previously, WABetaInfo spotted a similar development for the iOS version of WhatsApp, with a beta update introducing a favorite contacts feature. The feature allows users to select their favorites and place them in a separate tab.
Favorite contacts will also appear at the top of the call tab, making it much easier to make a phone call to your nearest and dearest. Now, it looks like this same feature is being prepared for WhatsApp Web.
While WhatsApp is easy to use, anyone with lots of different conversations on the go will know how easily a specific chat can disappear from view. And, while WhatsApp does allow users to pin up to three chats to the top of their chat list, it remains a relatively basic solution that won’t work especially well if you have lots of important conversations. A favorites tab could easily solve this issue.
While this is encouraging, there are still plenty of unanswered questions – for example, we don’t know whether the favorites list will be capped or uncapped. At the time of writing, there is no confirmation of when this feature will get rolled out to all users of WhatsApp Web. It is also unclear whether we will see this feature added to the Android version of WhatsApp.
However, the fact that this feature is in beta testing for both iOS and WhatsApp Web suggests that we should expect to see a favorites tab appear on the Android app at some point in the future.
