With the third wave of the pandemic still raging outside many South African’s doors, meetings (whether for work or play) remain mostly online. With WhatsApp still being enormously popular and widely used as a messaging app, its group call feature has become a staple for many peoples’ online interactions with friends, coworkers, and loved ones. Now it’s getting an upgrade that lets you join calls that started without you midway through.

Walk-in walk-out Whatsapp Calls

The big green social media app is loosely calling the feature ‘Joinable calls’ which tells you just about everything you need to know about it. Users can join ongoing calls even if they miss the start. In a blog announcement, WhatsApp seems to be putting particular focus on users missing the first ring of their cellphones.

“Some of the best conversations happen when you least expect it. Now, if someone in your group misses a call when the phone rings, they can still join whenever they like,” reads the post.

Additionally, users can step out of calls for a moment and join back in with no trouble at all. Call participants will also be able to see who’s on the call and who has been invited but hasn’t joined yet via a “call info screen”. And, of course, Joinable calls will benefit from the same end-to-end encryption WhatsApp calls have always had. Additionally, WhatsApp is adding end-to-end encryption to its cloud-based chat backup feature, something that’s been sorely lacking for some time now.

To join an ongoing call, whether you missed the first ring or hit ‘Ignore’ because you were busy at that moment, head over to the ‘Calls’ tab. From there you should be able to see any ongoing calls you were invited to. Tap the call and it will open the call info screen. From there you can tap ‘Join’ and you’re A for away.

Joinable calls are available to all users today. Make sure you have the latest version of the app if you want to make use of them.