Not every WhatsApp update will be a hit. For every voice note transcription feature added, there are hundreds of other AI-powered additions, or suggestions that ads are coming to the free messenger. The latest changes for the Meta app, first spotted by WABetaInfo, thankfully, find themselves in that happy medium of usefulness.
The silence is deafening
Only last week did Meta issue its 2.25.26.3 beta for WhatsApp, which let users tag “@everyone” in group chats, rather than painstakingly checking names off one by one. The idea was to help save time for the moms of the group chat by gathering everyone’s attention quickly. While the feature hasn’t officially left beta yet, WhatsApp was quick to refine the feature, allowing beta users to negate it entirely.
As part of the more recent WhatsApp beta for Android 2.25.27.1 update, WABetaInfo discovered that the handy feature was already being repressed, but only if you want it to. If someone is disturbing your group chat’s peace by abusing the @everyone tag, users can specifically choose to mute these notifications forever.
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That goes for group chats that are both muted and unmuted, meaning nobody can bypass the @everyone mute restrictions imposed by an individual user. It’s worth mentioning that there is still no way to mute group or individual chats specifically targeting others by name. These tags can and will circumvent your chats, regardless of whether they are muted or not. We don’t doubt that WhatsApp will eventually add something to change this.
When the ability to tag @everyone (and the power to silence it) eventually turns up — Meta hasn’t commented on when the feature might be made public — users can use it by typing ‘@’ in any group chat, clicking ‘everyone’, and hitting send. Simply visit Settings > Notifications > Mute @everyone to disable them.
