WhatsApp Beta temporarily enables ‘Reply Privately’ feature, drops it later

WhatsApp enables ‘Reply Privately’ feature by mistake.

The Reply Privately feature allows users to privately send a message to a participant in a group. (REUTERS)

WhatsApp rolled out the 'Reply Privately' feature in a beta update that will allow users to privately send a message to a participant in a group without anyone else knowing about it. The feature, however, was withdrawn later.

According to Express.co.uk, the highly anticipated feature is under development and could be rolled out with other features as well.

The feature appeared and was subsequently dropped from the beta version of the app, watcher of the popular chat app @WABetaInfo said, confirming that the developers wrongly enabled the feature.

"In the new WhatsApp beta for Windows Phone 2.17.344 the private reply feature is disabled. Probably WhatsApp has wrongly enabled it in 2.17.342," WABetaInfo tweeted.

WABetaInfo said that the option will only be available in group chats and will be included in the small menu that pops-up when users press and hold on a message. Earlier this month, WABetaInfo leaked the details of the features that WhatsApp was developing for web and desktop, including tap to unblock and a picture-in-picture (PIP) mode.

WhatsApp is also said to be working on a new business application. Called WhatsApp Business , the application comes with features such as auto responses, creating a business profile, chat migration and analytics. According to reports, WhatsApp has already started testing the service with select companies.