Key Takeaways
- WhatsApp under Meta is adding customization options, including chat bubble colors and themes.
- New settings page “Chat theme”, reveals individual options for callout color and wallpaper.
- Brightness slider for dark mode and potential per-conversation theming options may be in the works as well.
WhatsApp has been a hotbed of development under Meta ownership in the past decade. We have witnessed the addition of several new features such as Communities, and more liberal attachment file size limits. However, WhatsApp has missed out on its fair share of customization options like the theming settings on other Meta-owned apps — Instagram and Messenger. We now have our first look at what could come of the app’s efforts to offer users a modicum of customization.
In the past year, multiple reports from beta testers and WhatsApp feature trackers have suggested Meta could give users some customization options to stylize the UI beyond setting a custom chat background or choosing between light and dark mode. These reports suggest Meta is finally ready to help WhatsApp shed its signature green color and allow custom chat bubble colors or themes.
The sleuths at WABetaInfo are now ready to share our first look at the theming options, because beta version 2.24.20.12 of the app reveals development is gathering speed. The screenshots shared by the testers reveal a new settings page titled Chat theme, which has individual options for the message callout color and the wallpaper at the bottom.
Light and dark themes are coming too
Source: WABetaInfo
At the top of the page, the chat theme page also has samples of a few suggested color pairings, showing how they will look when applied. Each theme here also has its own unique wallpaper, but you’ll get to override it with a custom image quite like you can today.
WABetaInfo adds that at least one blue theme has both light and dark versions, giving us hope that these versions will be available for at least some other chat themes as well, if not all of them. More importantly, a brightness slider for the dark mode version is also seen in the screenshots, at least at the configuration stage.
That said, these new theming options aren’t available for beta testing yet, but they could see the light of day soon. Setting the chat theme here will allow defining the default for all chats, but WABetaInfo has reason to believe a future version will allow per-conversation theming, à la Instagram. Hopefully, the wait isn’t much longer.
