Until 2018, Goal did not pay much attention to the function of forward messages between users in WhatsApp. That year he introduced the label ‘Forwarded’ to differentiate them from others and mark them as Potential spam or misinformation messageswhich for most social networks is everything that does not fit with the official narrative of the moment. Then new labels arrived, such as ‘Forwarded many times’, and limitations on the number of times that these forwardings could be made. And now, for the first time in a few years, A new function is coming to message forwarding that, while facilitating the fight against spam and misinformation, improves this feature of WhatsApp.
According to WABetaInfo, users of the beta version for Android 2.24.25.3 are getting a new feature that allows add a custom message to content that is forwarded over the messaging app. It hasn’t been officially launched yet, but it is no longer classified as ‘in development’ and will reach more users in the coming weeks.
The media points out that this function was already available with multimedia files —images, videos and GIFs— and can now be used with any forwarded contentincluding text messages, documents and links. This will allow users to provide the desired context or explanation when forwarding messages in the app, without the need to send another separate message.
📝 WhatsApp beta for Android 2.24.25.3: what’s new?
WhatsApp is rolling out a feature to add a message to any forwarded content, and it’s available to some beta testers!
Some users can experiment with this feature by installing certain previous updates.https://t.co/nVVclPwhDgpic.twitter.com/q38ue3HgO5— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) November 27, 2024
This feature can be useful, for example, when sending a news link to a group chat to add additional information or an opinionvery convenient if recipients are likely to misinterpret the content. Custom comments can also be added when forwarding a message that has not been previously forwarded.
This new feature joins others that WhatsApp is currently testing, such as the ability to remove default chat filters, a clear minimalist theme, reverse image search, and an anti-spam feature to avoid annoying companies.
But the most significant thing that WhatsApp has brought this month is the transcription of voice messages in English, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. This is not even in beta, but being rolled out to all users.