The last three months alone have seen a number of useful updates for WhatsApp, including the ability to send files up to 2GB in size, add up to 512 people to a group, and Communities. This year has been extremely busy for WhatsApp and an important one as well. The messaging service is attempting to close the gap between itself and competitor Telegram. On the privacy front, new restrictions that let users hide their profile pictures and last seen from certain contacts were announced last month. That’s a lot of feature additions, but the Meta-owned app plans to add yet another new feature that will offer even finer-grained privacy controls.
According to information obtained by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp will soon include a new feature that would let users disguise their online status. Although the one given screenshot is from iOS, you can be sure that it will also be added to the Android and perhaps web versions of the app.
The Last Seen menu under Privacy settings will notice a new item at the bottom presenting two ways others can see you online. You can set it to follow your Last Seen setting, which effectively limits it to contacts, select contacts, or let no one see it at all. The original option is where your online status is always visible to all.
Since last November, you have been monitoring the development of WhatsApp’s Last Seen status.
Those who already keep their last seen status a secret will find hiding their online status to be an appealing choice, and it will finally allow them to use the site in complete stealth mode without worrying about prying relatives.
While you like the change, you do wish users could select only those people who can see their online status rather than everyone who can see their Last Seen status. After all, not all close relationships are the same.
There is currently no ETA for when this feature will be included in the stable version of WhatsApp; however, given that it is still in development and has not yet appeared on the beta channel, you anticipate it will take a few months.