tech2 News Staff

Without a doubt, WhatsApp is among the most popular communication tools on the planet. It’s got a particularly large following in India and it’s hard to not use the service since everyone is on it anyway.

That said, it does fall short a bit on the features front when compared to services like Facebook Messenger and Telegram. One such feature that we’ve been waiting a long time for, particularly on iOS, is support for rich notifications.

Rich notifications, introduced to iOS in iOS 10, allow users to interact directly with notifications in the same way they would within the respective apps. Viewing photos, videos, replying to messages, threads, etc., are supported by rich notifications.

WhatsApp beta for iOS 2.17.10.390:

Rich notification in the quick reply.

(DISABLED BY DEFAULT) pic.twitter.com/EFtryHCJf4 — WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) March 10, 2017

At WWDC 2016 in June, WhatsApp announced that its app would be adopting iOS 10 functions, but other than Siri integration, we haven’t seen much by way of updates.

Even today, nine months later, rich notifications are nowhere to be seen.

The feature does appear to be present within the app, however, as WABetaInfo, a very reliable source of WhatsApp hacks and hidden features, claims to have enabled the feature on iOS.

WhatsApp beta for iOS 2.17.10.390: FINALLY Rich Notifications! (DISABLED BY DEFAULT)

It was very difficult to enable for me 😛 pic.twitter.com/zIF1pM4oJ0 — WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) March 10, 2017

In his tweet, WABetaInfo says that the feature is disabled by default and that it was very hard for him to enable it.

We can’t really understand why WhatsApp is taking so long to enable such a basic feature in iOS. At this rate, we’ll probably see the feature coming out with iOS 11 sometime next year.

If you haven't the old Status enabled (Android users) and you installed the 2.17.95 version (Google Play), please tell me your country. — WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) March 10, 2017

In other news, the old, text-based WhatsApp status feature is making a comeback. Facebook has been shamelessly copying features from Snapchat and attempting to integrate them into its Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp apps, but not all users seem to like them.

The reverting to the old status message feature came about because of user feedback.

New conversation UI enabled by default in WhatsApp beta for Android 2.17.93. — WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) March 9, 2017

WABetaInfo has also reported that threaded conversations are now available in WhatsApp for Android Beta (2.17.66). Threaded conversations let you respond to messages in, well, threads. This makes keeping track of conversations much easier and provides context for replies on an active conversation thread. Telegram and the like have had this feature for many months now, if not longer.

There you have it, that’s your WhatsApp news roundup for the day. One can only hope that Facebook eventually pushes out the rich notifications update at the earliest.