Apparently, the popular instant messaging application owned by Meta, WhatsApp, is currently working on a new feature: an interesting application to make it easier for the user to identify the contacts and group chats from a glance.
WhatsApp, owned by Meta, has been in testing of a major update of adding lively, themed icons for both contact and group chats. According to this, the lifeless grey icon for every single one of your contacts without a profile picture will be automatically replaced as well.
Currently, contacts, group chats, and communities, all without a profile photo, are represented by plain grey icons. Functionally, this presented a neutral and uniform look. However, it resulted in making users have a hard time determining if they’re looking at a contact or a group unless a profile picture was present.
According to WABetaInfo reports, this should change in the future update as it would be showing colorful and visually distinguishable icons for contacts and groups making them more visible and easier to be recognized.
It looks forward to solving a problem that would eradicate contact groups from being merged into one another and also have a situation whereby specific chats do not really pop out when in a situation of looking for them.
It is quite similar to the colored icons used in the stock address book of Android. Each contact here is represented with a unique color-coded icon. Here, WhatsApp will use a similar approach and each contact will have its unique color and designs if that contact doesn’t have any profile picture or has him/her hidden for privacy.
This would, therefore enable users to differentiate between contact names that may be the same, or between contacts who may have opted out of showing a profile picture.
Besides the individual contact display, this update also affects group chats and communities that had not applied a particular image. To those groups, the new thematic icons will allow users to identify the difference in each group based on its particular aesthetic and colour, hence they will no longer have to open each group chat to figure out what that group is.
While a reportedly new feature, namely, themed icons is in the making, it has yet to be rolled out for the public. Beta testers can try it, though; in this regard, the latest available version of WhatsApp beta for Android is version 2.24.24.12, available at the Google Play Store.
Users cannot pinpoint an official date for its release yet but may look forward to future updates that might be issued with the feature rolled out.
By updating the interface of the application, WhatsApp hopes that it will be able to engage users with a resultant overall improved user experience, with quicker ease of navigation in chats and a more personalized touch to the app’s interface.