WhatsApp’s new setting will let you make your profile photo visible to select users

WhatsApp is planning to add ‘My Contacts Except…’ option to the Profile Photo privacy setting in its Android app.

Snippets of its code can be seen in WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.21.21.2. (WABetaInfo)

WhatsApp is enhancing privacy and security on its platform. The Facebook-owned messaging app is testing a new setting on its Android app, which once rolled out to a wider user base will let WhatsApp users hide their profile photos from specific contacts. As of now, WhatsApp users get three options to safeguard their profile photo on the messaging platform. While the ‘Nobody' option enables users to hide their profile photos from everyone, the ‘My Contacts' option makes the profile photo visible to all of a user's contact. The third option, that is, ‘Everyone' makes a user's profile photo visible to everyone using WhatsApp.

Now, WABetaInfo reports that WhatsApp is planning to add a fourth option to this mix. This fourth option will be “My Contacts Except…”. This setting will enable WhatsApp users to filter out their contacts to whom they don't want their profile photos to be visible to. The blog site says that while this new setting is still under development, snippets of its code can be seen in WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.21.21.2. When rolled out, this setting will be available to WhatsApp users through: Settings > Privacy > Profile Photo > My Contacts Except… Tapping on this option should take WhatsApp users to a list of all their WhatsApp contacts. From here, they will be able to select the contacts whom they want their Profile Photo to be made visible to.

It is worth noting that the ‘My Contacts Except…' option is not expected to be limited to the Profile Photo privacy setting. Reports in the past have hinted that WhatsApp is also planning to add a similar feature to other sub-sections within the Privacy settings including Last Seen privacy setting and About privacy setting. Both these settings only have ‘Everyone', ‘My Contacts' and ‘Nobody' options. The other two sub-sections, that is, Groups and Status already have the functionality wherein users can restrict the access of their WhatsApp contacts to their Status updates and groups.

In addition to this, WhatsApp has also started rolling out the Default Message Timer option to WhatsApp users running the WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.21.21.3. This update will enable users of WhatsApp's Android beta app to change the timer settings of the disappearing messages shared on the platform. As of now, disappearing messages vanish automatically after seven days. Now, WhatsApp users will also be able to set 24 hours and 90 days as time limits when the disappearing messages vanish automatically.