Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out a feature that allows users to initiate group calls with up to 31 participants, as well as minor improvements to the Android calls tab, and it is now available to some beta testers.
The calls tab on WhatsApp has undergone some minor changes. According to IANS, call links, in particular, are no longer mentioned on this screen, which now only states that it is possible to call one or more contacts.
In addition, the floating action button now has a plus icon.
According to the report, previous updates of the chatting platform allowed for group calls with up to 32 participants, but users initially had a selection limit of 15 contacts when starting such a call.
With this update, users can now start large group calls right away by selecting up to 32 people, including the caller who initiated the call, removing the previous restriction that could appear restrictive in some situations and cause user confusion.
According to the report, the feature to initiate group calls with up to 31 participants, as well as minor improvements to the calls tab, is available to a limited number of beta testers and will be rolled out to even more people in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp is said to be rolling out a ‘automatic security code verification’ feature for end-to-end encryption to a small number of Android beta testers.
With this feature, the app will attempt to automatically verify whether messages are end-to-end encrypted without requiring any user intervention.
This process will be called “Key Transparency”, enhancing the overall security and privacy of users’ conversations by checking if they are using a secure connection.