The revelation comes from WABetaInfo (via Android Police), who added that the feature would soon make it to WhatsApp beta for Android, iOS, and desktop. As you can see from the screenshot below, a filter icon appears on the chat search bar, with options to filter by Unread chats, Contacts, Non-contacts, and Groups.
Expanding chat filters to everyday users makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, we don’t know when the feature will make it to the stable version of WhatsApp. But since it hasn’t arrived on the beta channel yet, we expect the wait to be somewhat lengthy. Although chat filters work pretty much the same way on WhatsApp’s standard and Business versions, there’s one key difference. WABetaInfo notes that the filter icon will appear on the main screen for standard users. By contrast, Business account owners can only find the filter icon while using the search bar.
WhatsApp recently introduced emoji message reactions and upped the file size limit to 2GB
One of the recent WhatsApp updates introduced emoji message reactions and the ability to share files of up to 2GB, among other changes. Furthermore, the app now supports up to 512 participants in a group, up from 256. WhatsApp acknowledged that this was “one of the top requests” from its users. It could take a while to reach all users, though. Increasing the file size limit for in-app sharing has also been a long-sought-after feature. Rival app Telegram has allowed sharing files of up to 2GB since 2020. Shockingly, WhatsApp’s only supported a maximum file size of 100MB before this update. As for emoji reactions, there are only six of them, but the company said it would add more options, including additional skin tone choices. Message reactions exist in some form on almost every modern-day chat client. This illustrates WhatsApp’s slow pace in enabling minor and critical features on its app. Regardless, frequent users of the chat app will welcome all the new changes coming to the platform, particularly the aforementioned chat filter.
