Mark Zuckerberg unveiled three new privacy features for WhatsApp in August on Facebook, including restricting screenshots and blocking past participants and online status. And now, per the report from WABetaInfo, WhatsApp seems to be rolling out a new feature that allows users to have larger groups of up to 1024 individuals while simultaneously working on a list of pending group participants.
Larger groups with up to 1024 participants
Earlier, the ability to create groups with up to 512 members was made available to beta testers in June, and WhatsApp has now chosen to raise the group limit once again by enabling groups with up to 1024 members.
This functionality is accessible on WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS, as you can see in the screenshot; however, it is only available to an unspecified number of beta testers. Simply create a group or add new members to an existing one in WhatsApp to see if the feature is active for your account. In this tab, users can see the limit that has been set for your account.
Pending participants
The company is working on a list of pending group participants, with the most recent beta version of WhatsApp being 2.22.21.74 and the TestFlight build being 22.21.0 (406671622). All applicants for group membership are readily visible to group administrators, who can at any time approve them. With the latest WhatsApp beta update, it was found that WhatsApp is now working on adding the same feature to a future version of the iOS beta app.
As seen in the screenshot above, there will be an added section inside the group details called “Pending Participants” that will only be available to group admins because they’re the only members with the ability to approve new members.
When this option is turned on, group admins are the only ones who may approve new members, so newcomers who wish to join the group through a group invite link, for instance, must be personally approved by an admin.
As far as availability is concerned, larger groups (1024 participants) are rolling out to some beta testers on WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS, while the feature “Pending Participants” is still under development, and it will probably be a while before beta users can access them. Earlier, WhatsApp rolled out screenshot blocking and group polls in beta.