WhatsApp for Android is now testing a feature that lets users mark all chats as read at once. In recent months, this feature was said to be in development but remained inaccessible to beta testers. However, the instant messaging platform’s latest beta update for Android changes things and makes it available to several beta testers. It is the latest beta features on the platform to be rolled out to testers alongside the ability to block messages from unknown accounts, while other theming improvements are still being developed.
WhatsApp Begins Testing ‘Read All’ Feature
First spotted by feature tracker WABetaInfo, the in-development feature aims to improve the chat management experience on WhatsApp. After updating WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.24.20.19, Gadgets 360 was able to confirm that the feature was working as intended. It allows users to clear their unread message count by marking all received messages as ‘read’.
The Read all option in the overflow menu can be accessed by tapping the three dot menu. Tapping Read all marks all chats in the list as read, negating the need to manually select all chats and choosing the Mark as read option.
This feature is expected to be released to all users on the stable update channel with a future update. It is currently available to beta testers on Android, while iOS users might have to wait for a while for the feature to be available.
It should be noted that while developers test many features in beta, not all of them make their way to the public version of the app. However, the appearance of the feature on beta testers’ handsets is a sign that the feature is likely to be rolled out to all users in the coming months.