From WhatsApp Web to new emojis, the app has improved in numerous ways over the years. Now, the company is making it even better with three new features – Starred Messages, Rich Link Preview, and Direct Share, which is currently only available on Android 6.0 Marshmallow devices. These features were initially tested in the beta stage, and they are now officially available via an update.
Starred Messages on WhatsApp lets users save a particular message or media content, so they can get back to it later. This is useful as they don’t need to type in a keyword (if they can remember) to find a specific message. To ‘star’ a message, hold on the message you wish to save, touch the star icon on the top and your message or media content will be saved. To access these messages, just press the menu button on the main WhatsApp page and select “Starred Messages”.
Besides that, WhatsApp also launched the Rich Link Preview feature. Previously, when links are shared in the app, it would just appear as a hyperlink to the URL. Now, the company have made these URL shared in WhatsApp complete with a thumbnail image, link title and a brief description of the content. This lets users easily check the links shared and the recipient would also get to check the link first before opening it.
Last but not least, the Marshmallow-only feature on WhatsApp called Direct Share is a feature that lets users share a message or media content directly to a contact person. To do so, you just need to hold on a message, select the ‘share’ icon and immediately select the contact to share it with. This saves the user one less step to share a certain message or content.
The new version of WhatsApp is now slowly rolling out to both Android and iOS users around the world. As for the Direct Share feature, it is currently only available to Android 6.0 users, whereas iOS users do not have access to the feature yet. Those interested can check the Google Play Store or the App Store for the update, or just wait for the update to be automatically installed.
(Source: Android Police)
