WhatsApp updates group privacy settings, consecutive voice note playback comes to web

After concerns of misinformation being spread through the platform, especially via the group chats, WhatsApp rolled out a group privacy setting for users in India that allowed you to choose who can add you to a group, with an option to choose ’nobody’. Now, with a little improvement to this privacy setting, WhatsApp is rolling out the feature to users worldwide on both Android and iOS. As first reported by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has now added a new blacklist option in the privacy settings. Essentially, now when you check your group privacy settings, under the ‘Who can add me to groups’ setting, besides Everyone and My Contacts, you will now see a third option called ‘My Contacts Except’. This new option will let you select the users who have to gain approval before adding you to a group. You can either select a few users, or click on the Select All option to include the entire contact list. [caption id=“attachment_6472211” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”]  Representational image.[/caption] The report also notes that when you add a new contact to your phone you will have to manually add that additional person to the list. The My Contacts option, on the other hand, will let even the newly added contact in your address book add you to groups, and the Everyone option won’t add any restriction. The Nobody option from ‘Who can add me to groups’ settings has been removed. You will be able to see this setting by heading to WhatsApp Settings > Account > Privacy > Groups. Reportedly, WhatsApp is remotely activating the feature in iOS beta version 2.19.110.20 and Android beta version 2.19.298. In addition to the new group privacy setting, WhatsApp has reportedly also started to rollout consecutive voice note playback feature to WhatsApp Web. With the new feature, if you receive multiple voice messages on a chat, you will just have to hit play on the first voice note and all other consecutive ones will play one after the other. This, of course, won’t work if the series of voice notes you receive is interrupted by some other message or media file.