You’ll soon be able to lurk and leave groups quietly on WhatsApp. Three new features have been announced for Meta’s messaging app, and they all seem to be about helping users protect their privacy.
On Tuesday, WhatsApp announced three new privacy features: leaving groups silently, deciding who gets to see if you’re online, and screenshot blocking.
Your privacy deserves more protection.
That's why we're excited to announce three 🆕 layers of security to wrap your messages in.
Learn what they do 👇 pic.twitter.com/AmV0YoZcC8
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) August 9, 2022
Meta also issued a blog post announcement about the three new privacy features. According to this announcement, WhatsApp users will be able to leave group chats quietly, meaning if users choose to leave the group chat, the whole group will no longer be notified about it. Instead, admins will be the only ones notified of your exit.
Additionally, WhatsApp will also be giving its users the ability to choose who can see when you’re online and who can’t. According to a screenshot shared in the blog post announcement, this feature will allow users to choose visibility options like Everyone, My contacts, My contacts except, and Nobody. Also, if users don’t share their “last seen” and “online” statuses, they won’t be able to view those statuses of other users. Both this feature and the “leaving groups silently” feature are both slated to roll out this month to all users.
And lastly, the third privacy feature WhatsApp announced is screenshot blocking for View Once messages. If you’re not familiar, View Once messages are messages in which photos and videos that are sent disappear from your chat once your intended recipient has viewed them once.
With screenshot blocking for View Once messages, recipients are blocked from taking a screenshot of those messages. This feature is being tested and a release date hasn’t been announced for it yet.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?