Did you know that Whatsapp is the most used social media application in the world? Yes, With almost 1.5 billion monthly active users, it dominates the Android and iOS markets throughout the globe.

Owned by Facebook and working under the brilliant mind of Mark Zuckerberg, the reason for this mindboggling success of Whatsapp is probably their tsunami of updates. Updates that occur at regular intervals, work as per user feedback and inputs, consider legal laws and focus on constant improvement.

Whatsapp moves with time, understands the value of change and you should too. To help, here is the list of the major updates which would help you, in case you’ve missed them before –

1. Preference Based Status Updates

One major update that Whatsapp had brought back in 2017 was with its own status bar. Earlier, statuses were depicted in their chronological order. But, after this update, they would be in an order which is based on the user’s relevance. This means that frequently contacted persons will be shown first and others later. So, you get to review content from people that matter more, first.

2. The group adds and control

Like the privacy feature of WhatsApp allows you to control who can see your profile picture or not, now you can control who adds you and who doesn’t when it comes to Whatsapp groups and group chats.

Just Like the privacy feature which works for your profile picture, options like Everybody, Nobody and My Contacts will be displayed for you to choose from. It will be according to your preference and decision that the process would happen. If you choose everybody, anyone, whether in your contacts or not, can add you. If you choose nobody, likewise no one will be able to add you to groups. Similarly, my contacts option will only let people in your contact list add you up.

3. Forward feature

Off late, Whatsapp has become the medium of spreading fake news and reaching the masses of society. Infact, the Indian Government had raised concerns about the same, especially the negative impact it brings during political and social events. Keeping this under consideration, the next update targets to stop this phenomenon.

This new update will depict or highlight the messages which have been frequently forwarded. The criterion for being a frequently forwarded message is that it needs to be forwarded for more than 5 times. This way, people will know if something is fake and not be misguided easily.

4. Voice messages

Earlier you needed to tap on one voice message after the other to listen to them in order. The new feature allows the voice messages to play one after the other by themselves. That is, you will not need to tap on them again and again. They will do those themselves in an automatic manner making the task quick and easy.

Also Read: How Free Messaging Apps Like WhatsApp & WeChat Make Money

5. Profile Picture Download

After being so successful in the field of social media; the main agenda of Whatsapp these days has been to be safe, secure and user-friendly for its customers.

Keeping this in mind, Whatsapp has removed the option of downloading someone’s profile picture from their system. After this update, you can no longer download someone’s profile picture on Whatsapp directly to your phone. This way, your privacy remains in place and nobody can use your picture for the wrong causes.