Meta has announced new WhatsApp group features, set to give those brave group admins a little more power over who can join a group. We also got news of a new feature that’ll give users a simpler way of finding out which groups they have in common with friends. According to the blog post, WhatsApp says that it “wanted to build even more tools for admins and users alike”, citing the launch of Communities in 2022 as the new feature’s inspiration.
The decision is yours
Considering that Communities are just overly large groups at their core, it makes sense for admins to gain more power over who can and can’t join the group. When an admin shares out a group’s invite link, or makes any group joinable to a Community at large, hopeful clickers will first need to gain the approval of an admin.
All pending users that choose to join through the invite link will be held in limbo until a higher-up permits them access. Admins can do so through a new ‘Pending participants’ page, where they’ll quickly approve or deny specific users through a basic tick or ‘X’ system.
Read More: WhatsApp adds expiring groups to latest beta
Next, WhatsApp dove into how users will soon be able to more easily see which groups are shared amongst saved contacts. It described the feature as a way of helping rediscover forgotten group names, or simply see which groups two contacts have in common. Before, users needed to venture into a user’s profile and spend an additional five seconds to access the information.
There’s no telling when users will start receiving the new update. According to WhatsApp, the features will make their way to devices “over the coming weeks.” That could be as soon as tomorrow, or as late as three weeks from now. Be patient. Keep refreshing whichever app store you use. It’ll come. Eventually.