WhatsApp Private Reply: How to enable new private reply feature on Android beta?

WhatsApp has rolled out several improvements and upgrades to the messaging platform in recent months.

These include the introduction of group video, a Silent Mode, stickers support, and even a payments option.

And measures have also been made to tackle the spectre of fake news on the platform.

The latest feature should also prove popular with users, who will soon be able to reply privately to individuals in a group chat, rather than starting a separate conversation with the person.

How to use WhatsApp Private Reply?

Beta version 2.18.335 brings with it the Reply Privately feature – the ability to reply privately to a contact in a group chat.

“When you tap reply privately, WhatsApp will automatically open the private chat with the contact,” the Facebook-owned company announced in a statement.

It allows users to privately send messages to a someone in a group without letting others in the group know.

The feature is very easy to use – begin by hold the message of the sender you wish to contact privately.

Then tap on the three-dotted menu on the top right corner of the app.

This will reveal the Private Reply option.

The selected message will then open privately in the chat window in the form of a reply thread.

The latest version of the Android beta app is required to use this feature.

How do you use WhatsApp Stickers?

WhatsApp introduced stickers support for all Android and iPhone users last month.

As well as the default stickers, users can also download additional sticker packs directly from Google Play. There are three categories of stickers: Star, Clock and Heart.

The Star icon is reserved for users’ favourite stickers.

Clock stickers are the newest.

While the Heart icon categorises them into themes.

What is the new WhatsApp Silent Mode?

Silent Mode hides the notification dots for muted chats.

This means users will not see how many new messages they have received if a chat has been muted.

Notifications from muted chats were, until now, counted towards the count of unread messages.

The new feature is already enabled by default and it is unavailable as an option in Settings, meaning there is no way to manually disable the new feature.