WhatsApp Spotted Beta Testing Much-Needed Privacy Feature Improvements for iPhone

BY Chandraveer Mathur

Published 18 Apr 2022

WhatsApp End to End Encrypted

WhatsApp recently announced plans to roll out message reactions, a more liberal 2GB upload limit, and Community features in a future update. Another feature currently being beta tested could make it a lot easier to hide your “Last Seen” time and date from select contacts on your iPhone while hiding it from others.

WhatsApp allows users to hide their “Last Seen” data, but the option doesn’t give them granular control. You can either hide your Last Seen status from all your contacts or make it visible to everyone.

According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp’s TestFlight beta version 22.9.0.70 adds a new option for selectively hiding your Last Seen status. The option can be accessed by going to WhatsApp Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen. Earlier, the only options available in this menu were Everyone, My Contacts, and Nobody.

If you want to hide your Last Seen from specific contacts, you can choose the My Contacts Except… option under Privacy > Last Seen and select them. Everyone added to the exception list will not be able to see your Last Seen information.

WhatsApp last seen selected contacts

However, beta testers reportedly note that this setting does not hide your profile picture and “About” information from the selected contacts. Thankfully, WhatsApp has added new options to the Privacy menu that allow you to hide your profile photo and About information from specific contacts.

The implementation is very similar to hiding your Last Seen status. You need to select the My Contacts Except… option under Privacy > Profile Photo/About and choose the specific contacts.

WABetaInfo reports that this feature is available to beta testers. However, the timeline for a wider rollout is unknown. Would you find this feature helpful? Tell us how you would use it in the comments section below.

[Via WABetaInfo]