WhatsApp is bringing major improvements in its group chat feature that include Communities, a feature the instant messaging platform has been teasing for months. The feature will be released for all standard versions later this year. Apart from Communities, WhatsApp has revealed several new features coming to group chats from large file sharing to voice calls with a larger number of people.

The announcements were made via blogpost and tweets by Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp at Meta. The new features not just better media sharing but enhance user experience. WhatsApp enjoys the biggest subscriber base and since it has been a part of Meta, has continued to evolve as a product testing new features one after another.

In total, WhatsApp is getting five new features this year, and here’re the details for the same.

WhatsApp Community

The feature will arrange all groups with common interests under one section. “With Communities, you’ll be able to bring related groups together in a way that helps you organise meaningful connections easily and privately,” said a tweet by WhatsApp. Communities will also contain powerful new tools for admins, including announcement messages that are sent to everyone and control over which groups can be included.

WhatsApp audio call to support up to 32 members
 
At present WhatsApp lets you add up to 8 members including the caller. In an audio call, but soon a caller can add up to 32 members. “We’ll introduce one-tap voice calling for up to 32 people with an all new design.” the blog post said.

WhatsApp file sharing limit increased to 2GB

WhatsApp now allows media files up to 100 MB to travel through the app but by the end of the year it will be rolling out a new feature that will let users send files as big as 2GB.

With the new feature people will no longer need to cut or edit media through in-app or either via a third-party app as compressing media files also results in a quality drop and the end result could differ than imagined.

New emojis on WhatsApp

WhatsApp is going to allow emojis on the platform, after getting the request as part of wider user feedback. This will allow users to react to messages using emojis. The platform is also reportedly testing adding a shortcut for emoji reactions next to messages on the desktop app that will help users to react quickly to messages.

More power to WhatsApp Group admins

The messaging app says Group Admins will have the choice to delete messages that they feel are not suitable for the Group and its members. The deleted conversation will not be visible to any group members.

Apart from these, several other features were spotted to be under development like quickly start to chat with unsaved contacts, limiting sending forwarded messages to multiple groups etc. Nothing has been announced regarding the rollout of these features though.

The Meta-backed company also overhauled its voice messaging experience by adding waveforms, pausing, and resuming voice notes without playing all over again, out-of-chat playback, and draft preview while recording a voice message, and remembering the playback feature to play forwarded messages with the same pace.