- WhatsApp is rolling out a group chat feature called Group Message History
- Give new group members an easier way to catch up on conversations.
- Existing group members can choose to share between 25 and 100 previously sent messages with new members.
WhatsApp is my go-to for group chats despite being an iPhone user with iMessage at my fingertips, but I have my issues with the platform, and one of them is that when a new member is added to a chat they can’t see previous messages, but that’s about to change.
In a blog post, WhatsApp announced the launch of Group Message History, a feature that gives new group members an easy way to catch up on previously sent messages. WhatsApp says it has “started gradually rolling out Group Message History.”
The post says: “One of our most requested features, it’s another example of how WhatsApp is leading the way in group messaging, no matter your device. Group message history remains end-to-end encrypted like all other personal messages, giving you a faster, more private way to keep conversations flowing.”
When the update arrives, existing members will have the option to share previously sent messages with new members by adding them to a group chat, although administrators can choose to restrict this ability to themselves.
Although new members won’t have access to the full chat history, members will have the option to share the last 25 to 100 messages in a chat with them, which should be enough for new members to catch up. It’s a small inconvenience, but one that WhatsApp has implemented for privacy reasons.
With this in mind, if you forget to do this when adding new members to a conversation, you won’t be able to share messages with them after adding them, which means you’ll have to delete them and add them again to share messages.
Once you’ve shared selected messages with a new member, WhatsApp will notify existing chat members when message history has been shared, including timestamps and sender information, which is displayed differently than standard messages.
Until now, new group chat members have never been able to see the full conversation that took place before they were added, which in my experience only makes it more difficult to understand the context of the group.
This means that the group admin, or other members, would have to rely on forwarding messages or taking screenshots to give new members some context, resulting in a massive buildup in the camera roll.
There is no doubt that this will take a big load off serial group chats, myself included, and will also give WhatsApp the edge over its messaging rivals. Although Telegram has a similar tool for sharing message history, it’s all or nothing, so you can’t select the number of messages you share with new members. As for Apple’s iMessage, there is no such feature.
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