WhatsApp to get read later, advanced wallpapers and new emojis soon

WhatsApp is on a streak. The company has already announced a bunch of new features, such as disappearing messages and a new shopping button, that will be available on the messaging platform in the coming days. Now, reports have detailed new features including advanced wallpapers and new emojis that will be available in WhatsApp soon.

Let’s talk about advanced wallpapers first. If you have been tracking developments in WhatsApp over the past couple of months, you would know that the company has long been working on a feature that would enable users to set different wallpapers in individual chats. Now, WABetaInfo says that the company has released this feature to its Android beta users.

The report says that WhatsApp has started showing users the option to set a wallpaper either for a specific chat or for all chats. Additionally, Android beta users have also started seeing the feature to change the opacity of their selected wallpaper. The report says that users can choose from 32 new Bright Wallpapers, 29 new Dark Wallpapers, a custom wallpaper and Solid Colors. Users can also pick a wallpaper from the Wallpaper Archive. Additionally, if users decide to use a solid colour as wallpaper, they can apply WhatsApp Doodle as overlay. This feature, as mentioned before, is available only in the company’s Android beta app. It will be sometime before the feature is rollout on the main app.

Next is the Read Later feature. WhatsApp has long said to be working on a vacation mode feature that would enable users to keep an archived chat archived even when users get a new message in it. Now, the report says that the company is planning to replace Vacation Mode with the new Read Later feature. However, this feature will come with a change. The tipster says that in the Read Later feature, no notification will be presented to the users from the archived chat even when a new message is received. Unarchiving a chat will reverse this process.

The company has updated a banner which, explains that ‘Read Later’ is the new ‘Archived Chats’ and that it has been implemented to reduce interruptions. Users will be able to disable the Vacation Mode implemented with “Read Later” in the “Read Later Settings”. This feature is still in the development phase.

Lastly, the company is also planning to add new emojis to its platform. These new emojis include characters such as rollerskates, Bison, Black Cat, Sea Lion, Lungs, Heart, teapot, Green Olives, Quill and Boomerang among others and they are available in the latest version of WhatsApp’s beta app.