WhatsApp for iOS has received an update, which adds a number of useful new features. In this article we list the three most important ones.
1. Photos in your notifications
The most important improvement of the WhatsApp update is that you can now view received media, such as photos and GIFs, directly from your notifications. Normally you will always see the message ‘Photo’, but from now on photos and gifs can be downloaded directly from the notifications, and you do not have to open the WhatsApp app every time.
It goes like this. If a friend or family member sends you a photo, you can swipe down the notification on your iPhone to view the snapshot immediately. An alternative is to use 3D Touch – which works on the iPhone 6S and newer – to check the photo in advance.
The feature is rolling out slowly to every WhatsApp user and will work with a small group of people at the time of writing, but should be available to more users soon. The function only works if you are running iOS 10 or higher.
2. Recognition of suspicious links
WhatsApp has been working for a while on a function to automatically recognize suspicious links. The feature is now available, and will notify you when you receive a web page that is probably not what it seems.
For this, special characters in the url are looked at, such as the ‘ẉ’ instead of a normal ‘w’. If this is the case, you will receive a notification in the chat conversation. Below you can see how that works.
3. Support with Wallet app
If you use the Wallet app on your iPhone to store, for example, loyalty cards, payment cards and airline tickets, you can now also share cards via WhatsApp. This is useful, for example, if you have saved cinema tickets for your friends in the Wallet app, and you send them to the relevant people.
WhatsApp version 2.18.90 is rolling out via the App Store, and you can download the latest version via the link below. So keep in mind that not all new features immediately work for everyone. The update also ends support for the iPhone 4, a device that was released in 2010 and got its latest iOS update with iOS 7.1.2.