In April this year, WhatsApp started rolling out a much-anticipated feature; the ability to choose who can and cannot add you to groups. Unfortunately for most of us the feature was rolled out to Indian users only. Months later, WhatsApp has finally decided that this feature is good enough to start rolling out globally, which means beta users all over the world are finally getting the feature which debuted back in April as reported by WABetaInfo. WhatsApp’s Group Privacy feature will give users more control over who can add them to group chats. Questionably, WhatsApp has never explained why it takes so much time to roll out features but the release cycle for many features seems to take forever, for example, night mode being another feature leaked over a year ago but still not available. WhatsApp users now have one of 3 options for who can add then to a group: “Nobody”, “My Contacts”, or “Everyone”. “Nobody” simply means that you’ll have to approve joining every group to which you’re invited, and “My Contacts” means that only users you have in your address book can add you to groups. What will happen when someone tries to add you to a group without asking and you have these options set on your app is, the person adding you to a group will be prompted to send a private invite through an individual chat. There will also be a blacklist option allowing you to specify who cannot add you in groups if you want to do that on a contact by contact basis. This will definitely give you the choice of joining the group, which is what we all expect, right?! Plus, you’ll have three days to accept the invite before it expires. The feature requires WhatsApp Build 2.19.110.20 for iOS and is also available for Android. WhatsApp says the feature will be found under Settings > Account > Privacy > Groups and will begin rolling out today. It should be available to everyone in a few weeks.
