WhatsApp users can now add up to 512 people in groups
Another day, another WhatsApp beta feature. It was right yesterday when we reported WhatsApp’s upcoming Export Backup feature. A day later, the Meta-owned instant messaging app started testing bigger groups.
WABetaInfo has reported that WhatsApp has started rolling out support for expanded participant support for WhatsApp groups. Going forward, WhatsApp users will be able to add up to 512 participants in groups.
It is important to note that this is not the first time when WhatsApp is testing this feature. A while back, the company started rolling out this feature to select beta testers and now it is expanding it to more users which isn’t just limited to beta testers of the app.
As per the report, regular users on Android and iOS devices with the latest stable version of the app are also receiving the feature.
As per the screenshots posted by WABetaInfo, users who’ve installed the latest beta version of WhatsApp can create groups with up to 512 participants. There are no additional settings that are needed to be enabled for this.
If you are a beta tester and want to check if the feature is available for you, simply open the app and start creating the group on WhatsApp. If you see option 1/512 at the top while creating, then you have received the feature. Else, you’ll need to wait a little longer.
For reference, the other feature was the increase in the maximum size of files that users can share with others: from 100 MB it had gone up to 2 GB. In that case, the Meta platform managed to catch up with its main rival, namely Telegram; while as regards the groups it is still far behind; given that the client created by Pavel Durov supports up to 200,000 users.
In any case, the official changelog of the WhatsApp app does not seem to indicate anything other than bug fixes; both on the App Store and on the Play Store. The updates have been available in the past few days; we cannot exclude that there is also a component that must be active on the server side. Read More...
