On the heels of the official release of Companion Mode — letting you use a single account on up to four devices — comes a report that multi-account support is in the works for the Android app.
Multi-account support “would allow you to switch between profiles on the same device” according to a report from WABetaInfo (via Engadget). This feature should be released for the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.13.5 in a future update. It would work in a similar fashion to another Meta-owned social media site Instagram, “with a pop-up at the bottom of your app showing current accounts and the option to add new ones.”
All accounts, both old and new, would be stored on your device and can be logged out of at any point. It seems that this isn’t a business-only feature either, according to WABetaInfo, and if true means that it’ll roll out to all users once out of beta. Currently, there’s no information on a timetable for when that will happen, however.
WhatsApp has been knocking it out of the park lately
This isn’t the only useful feature WhatsApp has or will be getting, either. One is the aforementioned Companion Mode, which lets you connect up to four phones to one account as well as transfer data over, like chat history, from the account to a new device. Another is the addition of usernames that would be searchable instead of using phone numbers. The Windows WhatsApp client added eight-person video calls, while the desktop app will allow for 32-person calls.
There are also several quality-of-life changes for the app including poll improvements, enhancements to photos or document sharing, transferring chats to another iPhone without having to go via iCloud, and more.
Of course, not all of these updates will be particularly useful or good ideas. For instance, WhatsApp will be introducing Channels, which essentially will work like a Twitter feed. According to the WhatsApp blog post, it will act as a creator tool and is a place to “send texts, photos, videos stickers, and polls,” with plans to build payment and monetization services into the feature in the future.
Though it could be handy for capturing all the Twitter refugees currently fleeing the Elon Musk-owned social media site, this isn’t the purpose of WhatsApp in the first place. It could end up being a social nightmare if Meta isn’t prepared to have proper rules and moderation to enforce those rules as well as general order on Channels.
That said, it’s great to see WhatsApp adding so many excellent features to its application and hopefully we’ll get to see even more.
