Although WhatsApp is one of the most popular apps, the competition is fierce: Apple’s iMessage, Telegram, Signal… It’s no surprise, therefore, that those responsible have offered us new WhatsApp features throughout the year. But what’s next? What is the news coming to WhatsApp this 2022?

Thanks to the Beta versions of WhatsApp, the official announcements, and the occasional rumor, before 2022 begins we already know some changes and news that we will see in WhatsApp in the coming months.

Some will remind you of features that already exist in other apps like Instagram or Twitter. However, any additions are welcome as long as they improve the user’s experience of sending or receiving messages.

Your own stickers, created from WhatsApp

WhatsApp already has its own sticker creator. This is one of the latest WhatsApp features, in fact. This feature, however, is only available on WhatsApp Web at the moment.

Sooner than later, WhatsApp will also allow you to create stickers directly from your mobile application. And it would not be a surprise if that happens in 2022. So, probably, this year you will be able to create personalized stickers directly from your mobile and without having to install anything.

Merging WhatsApp with Instagram

If you look closely, when you open WhatsApp you will see a message indicating that it is owned by Meta, before Facebook. So is Instagram. Although at first, each application worked independently, in recent years we have seen the occasional integration between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

One of them, which we will see during 2022, consists of viewing Instagram content within WhatsApp. Specifically, the Instagram reels, 15 to 30-second TikTok -style videos with which it intends to compete with this Chinese social network.

Make yourself invisible to certain contacts

Not everyone wants WhatsApp Last Connected feature. Hence, you can disable it so that no one knows when you opened the app and/or if you saw the most recent messages. However, it is a very drastic function, since it only supports Activate and Deactivating.

In the future, WhatsApp will allow you to be more selective. Now you can show that information to everyone, to nobody, or to your contacts. Soon you will be able to hide that information from specific contacts. And it is that having someone to contact is not at odds with hiding certain things from him.

Hide information from specific contacts

If the above WhatsApp novelty takes place in 2022, we cannot rule out that this possibility will be added to other WhatsApp functions. Or at least that’s what WABetaInfo points to. This is the case of showing or hiding the profile photo, the status, the description that you configured for your account, etc.

This way you can be more selective and decide which specific contacts can see certain data about you. A way to keep your WhatsApp account more private for certain users, even if they are in your WhatsApp groups and/or in your contact list.

Delete messages without a time limit

Right now, if you send a WhatsApp message by mistake to a group or in a conversation, you have the possibility to delete it for yourself but also for those who have received it. But there is a time limit. After 68 minutes and 16 seconds (4096 seconds), you can no longer delete messages for everyone.

However, in future versions of WhatsApp, everything points to the time limit being removed. Or so indicates, which has access to the Beta versions of WhatsApp. In one of them, the possibility of deleting messages for everyone is shown in longer messages. This indicates that in the future you will be able to delete messages for all recipients whenever you want, even if several days have passed.

WhatsApp Features

One of the most useful features of WhatsApp is to reply directly to a message so as not to lose the thread of the conversation in a group with several topics at the same time. This way you see the answer linked to the original message. But sometimes, you feel like sending an emoji instead of a text message.

And among the WhatsApp news for 2022, one of them has to do with reactions. Something you can do on Facebook or Facebook Messenger. It consists of replying to a WhatsApp message with an emoji from a predefined list.

In future versions of WhatsApp, when someone reacts to your messages, you will see a notice with the reaction: heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, angry, happy, etc.

Transcribe audio messages

Another WhatsApp novelty that we should see in 2022. Audio messages have become very popular. So much so that WhatsApp had to add the possibility of accelerating playback speed. And, as we saw in September, the next step is to transcribe WhatsApp audio to text.

There is no release date for this feature yet, as it is under development and out of reach for users. We may know more about it in 2022 and, with any luck, we will be lucky enough to try this WhatsApp novelty during this year. For now, we know that WhatsApp will use Apple technology for transcription.