WhatsApp update bringing great new feature that will change the way you use the chap app

has got a number of new features in the works for the iOS and Android chat app, but the most recently revealed one could be the best yet.

WhatsApp has had a busy couple of weeks, and it looks like users are in store for a number of great surprises in 2018.

The Facebook-owned chat app recently enjoyed record amounts of use, with a staggering 75billion messages sent on New Year’s Eve 2017.

WhatsApp says out of the 75billion messages sent, 13billion were photos and five billion included videos. 

WhatsApp users could have sent even more messages if the service didn’t go down for around two hours on the last day of 2017.

Following this record usage, fans have been teased about a number of new features that could be heading to WhatsApp in 2018.

And one of those new additions to WhatsApp could change the way you use the chat app.

WhatsApp are working on a new feature that lets you prioritise certain notifications, so you get to see the alerts you truly want to.

The new ‘Notification Channel’ system has ten separate categories which you can control individually.

These are: Group Notifications, Message Notifications, Chat History Backup, Critical App Alerts, Failure Notifications, Media Playback, Uncategorised, Other Notifications, Sending Media, and Silent Notifications.

Each category has different options, with users able to turn notifications off for that category, or give them differing levels of importance.

Urgent messages make sounds and pop up on the screen, high priority makes a sound, medium priority make no sound and low priority has no sound or visual alerts.

WhatsApp users can decide what sound the notification makes, and whether the alerts appear on your lock screen or not.

The feature was uncovered by Android Police, and it’s currently only available in beta for devices running Android Oreo.

The upcoming WhatsApp feature also lets users quickly manage what type of notifications they receive.

When an alert comes through, WhatsApp users just need to tap and hold it – that will then bring up the notification type and it can be instantly disabled.

With the ‘Notification Channel’ feature still in beta, it’s unclear whether the release will be only a few weeks away or a few months away.

The news comes after another new WhatsApp feature cropped up.

A recent beta update was released for WhatsApp which introduced a brand new video call switch button. 

It appears when you’re in the middle of a WhatsApp voice call and lets you switch to video with just one touch.

The new feature was spotted by WABetaInfo, who said it is only available at the moment to people signed up to the WhatsApp beta version.

Outlining the feature, they said: “WhatsApp has developed a new convenient feature that improves the user experience.

“WhatsApp has released today a video call switch button.

“This button is visible when you are in a voice call: when pressed, WhatsApp will send a request to the recipient, asking if he wants to ‘convert’ the current voice call in a video call.

“WhatsApp has created this feature to save time: usually, when two users were in a voice call and they wanted to make a video call, they had to end the voice call. 

“Now, thanks to this option, it’s all faster.

“The recipient can accept or reject the request: if he will reject it, the voice call will normally continue, otherwise WhatsApp will automatically switch the voice to the video call.”