WhatsApp is now letting you, mute certain speakers, on group calls

WhatsApp has been consistently rolling out features that make this Meta-owned messaging app a better, more handy way of communicating over other platforms. Three of the latest features include the ability to mute certain people during group calls, the option to hide your profile picture from specific people as well as your ‘last seen'.

The first, the option to mute certain people during group calls, is very useful in bigger group calls where someone might have forgotten to mute themselves when they joined in or are in the same room and you can hear an echo of the conversation.

Video conferencing apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams allow hosts to mute all participants on a call or even specific ones, but they do not offer the option for individual users to mute who they want during a call. The new feature on WhatsApp is handy for controlling voice calls (that can accommodate up to 32 users) and video calls (maximum of eight people).

You can also message specific people during a group call and this helps if you want to speak to a certain caller while the call is on without involving all the participants. There is a new banner rolling in as well that will notify callers when someone new has joined the call once it has already started.

Additionally, WhatsApp has added another layer of protection to your accounts by allowing you to choose which contacts can see your profile photo, ‘last seen’ status that shows when you were last active on the platform, and ‘About’. This will help users keep profiles private from more professional contacts or anyone else you don’t want to give access to information, particularly the ‘last seen’.

Till now, WhatsApp did allow you to hide your profile photo, ‘About’, and ‘last seen’ from everyone or people not on your contact list. The platform started hiding users’ ‘last seen’ status from strangers by default last year due to “potential privacy implications”. This ‘last seen’ can also be hidden from everyone on the platform.

WhatsApp users can now set ‘last seen’, profile pic, about and other features for ‘Everyone’ to see, open it only for ‘Contacts’, for ‘My Contacts Except…”, or ‘Nobody’. With the ‘My Contacts Except…” is where you can pick and choose who all you want to hide this information from.

Also Read: WhatsApp is giving group admins more control over new members

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