WhatsApp's new privacy features will let you quietly leave group chats

What is happening

WhatsApp is adding privacy features that let you quietly leave group chats, hide your online status, and block others from taking screenshots of photos meant for one-time viewing.

Why it matters

Privacy features will add better ways to control your visibility in conversations and keep prying eyes away from how often you check into the app.

What next

WhatsApp’s new features are being announced roughly a month before Apple’s iMessage is expected to bring iOS 16 to the masses, the latter adding message editing and unsend.

WhatsApp announced three new privacy features on Tuesday, one of which will let you leave a group chat without alerting the entire group.

The Facebook-owned company says it will add the ability to leave groups silently, meaning admins will still get a warning, but everyone else in a group chat won’t. This can be especially useful for larger group chats—for example, ones that are themed around an event or a hyperactive chat that you just don’t find as engaging anymore.

WhatsApp will also soon let you hide your active online status from specific people, and when enabled, the app won’t show select people the exact times you’re available on the app. The app currently shows when you’re online to anyone who can see your profile in the app. WhatsApp can also show people when you were last active, and this can now be hidden from others in the app’s privacy settings.

The ability to silently leave groups and hide your online status will be introduced to WhatsApp later this month, and its third feature – currently in testing – will block others from taking screenshots of messages that are meant to be reviewed once. This has been a major problem for apps that encourage ephemeral messages like Snapchat, which in the past have combated the problem by sending a notification when a message is copied via a screenshot.

While that should help, it’s worth noting that even a short message can still be captured using a separate device like another phone or camera. Anyone sending sensitive material should be careful even after WhatsApp launches the screenshot blocking feature.

WhatsApp’s new wave of features arrives a month before the expected public release of iOS 16, which will update iMessage to include features like edit a message and unsend a message. Both iOS 16 features will only work between Apple devices that support iMessage. Unsending a message will work similarly to how WhatsApp and other chat apps already allow you to delete an existing message by replacing the previous text with a notification that the message has not been sent.