By 
Popular mobile and desktop chat app WhatsApp has detailed all the significant updates made to its calling features in 2022.
The platform said that while WhatsApp was known for its secure messaging, more people worldwide were using it to make voice and video calls.
“That’s why over the course of this year we’ve launched several improvements to calling on WhatsApp for catching up with your loved ones, colleagues and communities securely,” WhatsApp stated.
The first set of improvements was focused on group calls.
WhatsApp increased the number of maximum participants on a video call to 32, a four-fold jump over the previous maximum of 8 members.
It also made it easier to message or mute call participants.
“Long-pressing on a participant will enlarge the video or audio feed and allow you to either mute or message them separately while keeping the calls going,” WhatsApp said.
In addition, WhatsApp also launched shareable call links to make inviting people to join calls easier.
From a design perspective, WhatsApp introduced colourful waveforms to lets users easily see which call participant is speaking when their camera is off.
It also launched in-call banner notifications to let people see when someone new joins a group call.
Finally, iOS users will soon get a feature that has been available to Android users for years — picture-in-picture (PiP) video calling.
This will allow them to use other apps while seeing a miniaturised window of their video call screen.
WhatsApp said PiP for iOS is currently in beta testing and will be rolling out to the official app early in the new year.
WhatsApp added it would continue making improvements to WhatsApp calling in 2023 without divulging further details.
Comments