WhatsApp Improving Video Calling With Support for More People, Picture in Picture

Popular Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp today announced several improvements to video and audio calling, putting it on par with other platforms that support video calls.

Whatsapp Feature
WhatsApp video calls on mobile devices now support up to 32 people, four times more than the previous eight person limit. Audio calls have supported 32 people for some time, but now video calls will as well. Apple's own FaceTime app supports 32 person video calls, so WhatsApp will now be able to better compete with ‌FaceTime‌ for large group video chats.

Long pressing on a participant in the call will enlarge the audio or video feed so you can mute people on a case by case basis or message them privately, and there's now an option to share a call link with people, something that's also an existing ‌FaceTime‌ feature.

There are new in-call banner notifications to alert users when someone new has joined a call, and for those with their camera off, waveforms are more colorful to make it easier to see who is speaking.

WhatsApp is also testing an iOS picture in picture feature that will allow WhatsApp users to multitask and use other apps while remaining on a video call, with this option set to roll out more widely in 2023.

WhatsApp for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Top Rated Comments

TheYayAreaLiving ?️ Avatar
13 months ago
How about WhatsApp on an iPad? Please make it happen. Long overdue!
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Love-hate ? relationship Avatar
13 months ago
when will they finally launch the ARM built on catalyst for mac ?

and maybe we'll see an ipad version in 2030 ?
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Shanghaichica Avatar
13 months ago
They need to improve the video quality
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Love-hate ? relationship Avatar
13 months ago
this is whatsapp catalyst on Mac btw . beta



Attachment Image
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ian87w Avatar
13 months ago

4 Android users get their chats stored on Google drive free, why do we on iCloud have to use our storage?
Probably due to some deal Whatsapp had with Google. Before the availability of e2ee, Google Drive whatsapp backup is practically plain text, and you can imagine the amount of data Google crawled. Nothing is free.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
visualseed Avatar
13 months ago

Governments use Whatsapp? That's scary.
In Europe many public services use text interfaces to their normal IVR systems through whatsapp business to offer services to users based on their phone number on file. It's great for looking up information and getting account statues. It means they don't have have massive call centers and requests that require human assistance can go into a message queue that is much easier to manage on both ends than waiting on hold.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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