Bringing a new person into an active WhatsApp group chat often leaves them in the dark, staring at a blank screen with zero context.
A helpful new feature detailed by WhatsApp today aims to fix this exact issue by allowing group members to share previous message history with newcomers, who usually just see the member list but have no idea what’s going on.
When adding a fresh contact to a group, users can now toggle on a setting to instantly forward recent conversation history. This optional feature lets you choose to send up to 100 of the most recent messages, including any pinned texts. This is a massive favour for busy chat administrators who want to get people up to speed without repeating themselves.
To catch up a new member up on your iPhone, follow these steps when adding them to your WhatsApp group:
Tap the group name at the top of the chat (or swipe the group left in your chats list and select More > Group info).
Tap Add.
Select the contact you want to add.
Turn on Message history.
Select the number of recent messages to share and tap Done.
Tap Add members, then tap Continue.
WhatsApp says shared history is fully protected by end-to-end encryption, meaning only the participants in the chat can read the messages. There’s also transparency is built in, as when history is shared, WhatsApp sends a system notification to the entire group, and the new arrival gets a direct alert as well.
Group admins retain complete control over this feature. Admins can easily turn the ability to share history on or off within the group permissions menu, preventing regular members from sharing past chats if privacy is a concern.
Using WhatsApp is the best way to manage a group chat that can span across iOS, Android and more. Apple should add these features to group chats on iMessage, which continues to lag in the feature department (we can’t even pin messages).
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