WhatsApp working on message reaction notifications for Android users

San Francisco: Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp releases its new update 2.21.24.8 for its Android users on the beta channel, which reveals that the company is working on message reaction notifications for its Android app.

According to GSMArena, WhatsApp has been developing the message reactions feature for a few months now, which, as evident from its name, lets users react to messages the same way they react to the posts and comments on the Facebook app.

Previously, WhatsApp had no plans to notify users of message reactions, but the company later began developing it for the beta version of its iOS app and now it is also working on providing the same feature to its Android users.

Reports suggest that the message reaction notifications feature is "planned to be released in a future update".

Recently, another report said that WhatsApp is working on a feature that will let users hide their "last seen" status from specific people.

The report mentioned that the beta version of WhatsApp for Android now has an option to hide your "last seen" status from specific people. The feature will allow WhatsApp users to set their "last seen" status to be viewed by everyone, their contacts, their contacts except a blacklist of specific people and nobody.

The feature has been in active development for a few months at this point, and now it's finally live for a subset of those part of the beta programme, the report said.

Reports also say that the meta-owned platform is reportedly developing a couple of new apps for macOS and Windows users. As per a report by WABetaInfo, the WhatsApp features tracker citing the Italian blog Aggiornamenti Lumia, WhatsApp is developing new apps for Windows users.

It is said to be a Universal Windows Platform based app that has been developed from the ground up. The app will include a drawing feature that will be particularly useful for devices with touch-screen displays.

The app resembles Skype in appearance with General, Account, Chats, Notifications, Storage, and Help will be the six categories of settings.

In addition, the new version of WhatsApp for macOS is said to be identical to the iPadOS version that was recently spotted.