5 new WhatsApp status features

Meta has introduced five new WhatsApp Status features, including reactions and link previews, to help increase usage of this ephemeral Stories-like feature.

• What’s happening? Meta has introduced 5 new WhatsApp status features, including reactions, rings, and link previews.
• Why care? With the new WhatsApp status features, you can make your ephemeral updates more exciting and attractive to your contacts.
• What to do? Read more on the WhatsApp blog.

5 new features for whatsapp status

People using WhatsApp Status will soon be able to take advantage of five new features that will make their Stories-like ephemeral updates more compelling than ever before.

New features include a private audience selector, voice statuses, status reactions, status profile rings, and link previews. Some of them may already be available to some users, but others will be rolled out at a later stage. Meta said the phased release will take about a few weeks.

1. Private Audience Selector

When creating a status update, a closed audience selector appears in the lower left corner. With it, you can set the privacy of your status by controlling who can view it. The most recent audience selection is saved and used as the default for your subsequent statuses. In other words, it’s a per-status setting that you can change whenever you post a WhatsApp status update.

2. Voice status

In addition to text and media statuses, WhatsApp allows you to record and share voice messages up to 30 seconds long as a status update. “Voice Status can be used to send more personal updates, especially if you feel more comfortable speaking rather than typing,” WhatsApp notes.

3. Status reactions

Previously, you could respond to emojis in chats, but now you can assign quick emoji reactions to status updates from friends and close contacts. Just view someone’s status and swipe up, then choose from eight emoji reactions. As before, you can also respond to the status with text messages, voice messages, stickers, and more.

4. Status profile rings

New contact statuses are visually highlighted by the profile rings that appear in WhatsApp. So if you’re chatting with someone, looking at group member lists, or looking at someone’s contact information, you’ll know if they have any status updates just by looking at their profile photos.

5. Link Preview

You used to be able to share a story by pasting its URL into your text status, but now WhatsApp also includes a preview of the link’s content (just like in regular messages). Contacts interacting with your status update can now see a preview of the URL you’ve shared without having to click it first.

What is whatsapp status? How it works?

Whatsapp Status allows you to share quick updates with your friends and other WhatsApp contacts. In addition to raw text, your status update may include multimedia content such as photos, videos, and GIFs. Everything you post on your WhatsApp status is end-to-end encrypted, which means no one – not even WhatsApp – can access your status content. Your status updates will automatically disappear after 24 hours.

How to create status updates in whatsapp

To create a status update, open WhatsApp and tap the Status tab at the bottom. From there, tap the camera icon to update your status with images, videos, and more. Alternatively, select the Chats tab and select the Camera icon in the top right corner. If you tap the pencil icon instead of the camera icon, you can create a written update without any media.

To control who can see the status update you’re about to post, click the audience toggle in the bottom left corner. To change the privacy of all future status updates, click the Privacy button in the upper left corner of the Status tab, then choose My Contacts, My Contacts Except, or Send Only From.

Remember that you cannot send or receive status updates from people who are not saved as your contacts and do not have a number in their address books.

Optionally, you can share your statuses as stories on Facebook, view the statuses of contacts, disable or enable statuses that distract you (find them under the Disabled Updates heading), delete or forward your status updates, and more.