The Facebook-owned popular messaging platform, WhatsApp, has been testing some new features for its iOS app for a while now. Recently, it was revealed that the company is beta testing a Snapchat-like feature called ‘View Once’.
The new feature allows users to send photos and videos that vanish after being seen once. However, WhatsApp will not notify the users if someone takes a screenshot as Snapchat does when a screenshot is taken.
WhatsApp for iOS working on Snapchat-like feature called ‘View Once’
The feature is currently available for those users who signed on earlier for beta testing. After updating the app from the TestFlight, go to a chat, send a photo or a video to see if the new feature is available for you or not. According to WABetaInfo:
WhatsApp is finally releasing, for people that joined the beta program, a new feature that allows you to send photos and videos to disappear when they are viewed the first time.
If you want to discover if the feature is already available for you, just try to send a photo or video and you should see the view once button in the chat barWhen you send the media, it already disappears from your mobile phone and it will also disappear in the recipient’s phone when he opens it once. You are notified when the recipient opens the photo/video because the bubble message will report “Opened”.
Along with the new ‘View Once’ feature, WhatsApp is also rolling out new redesigned in-app notifications. With redesigned notifications, users will be able to see more details in the information banner as videos, images, stickers, and also GIFs.
The user can now expand the in-app notification in order to show the chat preview: the chat preview is not static like the one that appears when you peek on a chat cell, so the user can scroll up and down the view to see older and newer messages.
According to the company, if a user reads a message through the redesigned notification bar, it will not count as read. For that, users need to open the chat normally. A public release date has not been yet been shared regarding these new features but they are in beta testing so they should be available soon.
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