WhatsApp Bringing Ability To Hide 'Online' Status From Everyone: All Details

Meta-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp is working on a feature that will give users the ability to hide their online status from everyone. This will come as an extension of the already-existing feature where users can hide their “Last Seen” status from their contacts.

The feature, spotted in a report from WABetaInfo, has been found in an iOS beta version of WhatsApp and is set to come to end-users in a future update. According to the report, the feature is still under development and has not even been launched for beta testers since it is not ready. Currently, users can choose to display their “Last Seen” information to contacts, some people, or no one. For a future version of the app, WhatsApp will let users follow a similar approach to their online status, the WABetaInfo report hints.

The new privacy-focused feature is being developed at the same time there are reports of WhatsApp bringing the ability to edit messages after they are sent. It has been quite a while since the app started letting users delete messages, but it never brought the ability to edit them – which is finally changing in a future update.

Further, the company is also rumored to be working on allowing users to delete messages that are up to two days and 12 hours old, extending from the current limit of just over one hour. The ability to edit and delete messages is also coming to iMessage on iPhones with iOS 16.