Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Read more
WhatsApp is trialling a new feature for group chats after users complained too many messages were being ignored.
The Meta-owned messaging app is developing a new feature which allows conversation threads to be grouped separately from the main chat.
This feature would make it easier for users to see replies to a specific message in a chat to avoid confusion.
Users will potentially be able to tap on a thread and see all of the responses in a single chain, according to beta testing.
Website WABetaInfo found this new development while investigating the beta version of the app, which is used to trial new changes.
“It appears that WhatsApp is now developing additional tools to further improve message management, organization, and interaction in individual conversations and group chats,” WABetaInfo said in blog post.
The latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.25.7.7 update shows WhatsApp is working on a feature to organise message replies into threaded conversations.
“WhatsApp is exploring the implementation of a feature that will allow users to follow replies to a specific message in a more organized and cohesive thread,” the website added. “This feature is expected to be released in a future update for individual conversations, group chats, communities, and channels.”
“This new feature will group all related replies directly under the original message, making it significantly easier to track ongoing conversations and discussions without the confusion of disjointed replies scattered throughout the chat.”
WABetaInfo said that once a user replies to a quoted message, the thread will remain connected to the original message, and therefore all messages will be organised.
“Instead of scrolling through a long list of individual replies, users will be able to follow and view all the related responses in a dedicated thread, keeping the conversation structured and easy to follow,” it said.
Apple iMessage and Facebook Messenger already feature threaded conversations.
There is currently no set date for when users can see this feature being rolled out.