WhatsApp brings two new features for groups, offers new controls to admins

Announcing the new features, the company said “Last year, we rolled out Communities, to help people get the most out of their groups on WhatsApp. Since launching, we’ve wanted to build even more tools for admins and users alike. Today we’re excited to roll out a few new changes we’ve made to make groups more manageable for admins and easier to navigate for everyone.”

WhatsApp has added a new tool to the app that gives group admins the ability to decide who is able to join a group. With the new feature, when an admin chooses to share their group’s invite link, or make their group joinable in a community, they will have more control over who can join. 

“Groups are where people have some of their most intimate conversations and it’s important that admins are able to easily decide who can and cannot come in,” WhatsApp said.

Another feature coming to WhatsApp is the ability to search a contact’s name to see groups that are in common. 

“With the growth of Communities and their larger groups, we want to make it easy to know which groups you have in common with someone. Whether you’re trying to remember the name of a group you know you share with someone or you want to see the groups you’re both in, you can now easily search a contact’s name to see your groups in common,” the company said.

The two new features will start rolling out to WhatsApp users worldwide over the coming weeks. 

In a recent update, WhatsApp introduced text detection feature to the iOS. The feature enables users to extract text from images shared on WhatsApp. Once the feature is available, users will need to open an image that contains text and they will see a new button that lets them copy text from the image.