WhatsApp’s new alternate profile feature could protect your privacy

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WhatsApp is one of the most popular instant messaging applications globally, with billions of users. For the last few months, Meta has been trying its best to revamp the platform, making it more capable.

It has even added features like screen-sharing to compete with the likes of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and more. 

Although most recently, the platform has introduced Passkey support to the platform, and most notably, it now lets you use two accounts on the same device. 

And yet again, WhatsApp has added more features – a new alternate profile feature and the ability to add more people to video calls.  

What’s the alternate profile feature on WhatsApp? 

As usual, the “alternate profile” feature was spotted by WABetaInfo in the latest WhatsApp beta for Android v2.23.21.12.

With this new feature, users will have a separate restricted profile, which is visible to their contacts while displaying the alternate name and photo to the others on WhatsApp. 

It’s a useful addition for those who want to protect their WhatsApp profile photo by making it only visible to the people in their contacts list. 

And the other people, whose number is not saved on your contacts list, will only see a blank profile photo.

You can think of the “alternate profile” as a privacy feature, especially useful if you are in frequent contact with people not on your contact list.

The “alternate profile” is currently in the beta stage and will likely be available on the stable version soon. 

You can now make video calls with up to 32 participants on WhatsApp!

WABetaInfo has also noticed a new “Improved Calling” feature in the latest 23.21.72 WhatsApp update for iOS. 

The new feature lets you make group calls with up to 32 participants, including yourself.

In the previous WhatsApp builds, the group call feature supported 32 maximum participants on paper as well. However, it was impossible to select more than 15 people to initiate the call. 

But after the call has been initiated, you could add more people while the call is underway. But with this new feature, you will be able to add 32 people even before starting the call, which is pretty convenient. 

The “Improved Calling” feature is currently rolling out on iOS. We don’t know when Android users will get it.

Have any thoughts on this? Drop us a line below in the comments, or carry the discussion to our Twitter or Facebook.

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