Voice messages on WhatsApp changed the way people communicate by providing a quick and secure way to share your voice. We’re excited to build on this feature with new instant video notes. Now you can record and share short personal videos directly in the chat.

Video notes are a real-time way to respond to chats with whatever you want to say and show in 60 seconds. We think these will be a fun way to share moments with all the emotion that comes from video, whether it’s wishing someone a happy birthday, laughing at a joke, or bringing good news.

Sending a video note is as simple as sending a voice message. Just press and hold the camera icon to record a video. You can also swipe up to lock and record the video hands-free. Videos will play automatically on mute when opened in a chat, and tapping on the video will start the sound. Video notes are protected with end-to-end encryption to keep your messages secure.

Video notes have begun rolling out and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

4/2: Updated to reflect a change in how people can access video notes.

Protecting the privacy of your messages remains the driving force behind what we’re building at WhatsApp. While End-to-end encryption is the foundation to ensure your calls and messages are secure, we continue to add more layers of privacy on top including the recently launched Chat Lock to protect sensitive chats behind a password, Disappearing Messages that vanish, screenshot blocking for View Once, and the ability to keep your online presence private.

Today, we’re excited to add two new updates to this growing list: Silence Unknown Callers and Privacy Checkup, which are available to users now.

Silence Unknown Callers is designed to give you more privacy and control of your incoming calls. It helps to automatically screen out spam, scams, and calls from unknown people for increased protection. These calls will not ring on your phone, but will be visible in your Call list, in case it turns out to be someone important.

To spread the word, we’re introducing Privacy Checkup to help make sure everyone knows about the options of protection on WhatsApp.

This step-by-step feature guides you through important privacy settings to help you choose the right level of protection, all in one place. Selecting ‘Start checkup’ in your Privacy settings will navigate you through multiple privacy layers that strengthen security of your messages, calls, and personal information.

Securing your private communication is important because we know people need a safe place to communicate. We’re taking this message around the world in new ways to help communicate why this is so important. Starting this week, we’re encouraging people to check in with one another securely via a private message so friends and loved ones know they have a safe space to open up.

Today we’re excited to introduce Channels: a simple, reliable, and private way to receive important updates from people and organizations, right within WhatsApp. We’re building Channels in a new tab called Updates - where you’ll find Status and channels you choose to follow - separate from your chats with family, friends, and communities.

Channels are a one-way broadcast tool for admins to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls. To help you select channels to follow, we’re building a searchable directory where you can find your hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials, and more. You can also get to a channel from invite links sent in chats, e-mail, or posted online.

We’re aspiring to build the most private broadcast service available. This starts by protecting the personal information of both admins and followers. As a channel admin, your phone number and profile photo won’t be shown to followers. Likewise, following a channel won’t reveal your phone number to the admin or other followers. Who you decide to follow is your choice and it’s private.

Similar to how we build messaging, we don’t believe Channel updates should have to stick around forever. So we’ll only store channel history on our servers for up to 30 days and we’ll add ways to make updates disappear even faster from follower’s devices. Admins will also have the option to block screenshots and forwards from their channel.

Lastly, we’ll make it possible for admins to decide who can follow their channel and whether they want their channel to be discoverable in the directory or not. Given the aim of Channels is to reach a wide audience, channels are not end-to-end encrypted by default. We do think there are some cases where end-to-end encrypted channels to a limited audience might make sense, such as a non profit or health organization, and we’re exploring this as a future option as well.

To kick off Channels, we’re excited to work with leading global voices and select organizations in Colombia and Singapore, where Channels will first be available, to build, learn, and adapt the experience. We’ll bring Channels to more countries and the ability for anyone to create a channel over the coming months.

We also believe there is an opportunity to support admins with a way for them to build a business around their channel using our expanding payment services as well as the ability to promote certain channels in the directory to help increase awareness.

Naturally, the core of how people use WhatsApp will continue to be private messaging among friends, family, and communities, and that will always be our first priority. Building channels is a big step our users have asked us to take for years. We think the time is finally right to introduce a simple, reliable, and private broadcast tool and we hope you enjoy using it in the months and years to come.

For the moments when you make a mistake, or simply change your mind, you can now edit your sent messages.

From correcting a simple misspelling to adding extra context to a message, we’re excited to bring you more control over your chats. All you need to do is long-press on a sent message and choose ‘Edit’ from the menu for up to fifteen minutes after.

Edited messages will display ‘edited’ alongside them, so those you’re messaging are aware of the correction without showing edit history. As with all personal messages, media and calls, your messages and the edits you make are protected by end-to-end encryption.

This feature has started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

Our passion is to find new ways to help keep your messages private and secure. Today, we’re excited to bring to you a new feature we’re calling Chat Lock, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security.

Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications, too.

We think this feature will be great for people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives. You can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your phone password or biometric.

Over the next few months we’re going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices and creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from the one you use for your phone.

Tell your friends about Chat Lock, which is rolling out now.

As we continue to innovate the app, today we’re sharing several new features coming to WhatsApp that we hope will make chats a little more productive and fun.

New updates to Polls

We’re introducing three new updates for polls to help groups gather info and make decisions together.

• Create single-vote polls: For when you need a definitive answer, we’re introducing the option for poll creators to allow people to vote only once. Simply turn off ‘allow multiple answers' when creating a poll.
• Search for polls in your chats: It’s not always possible to answer a poll immediately, and it can be difficult to find a poll within the chat at a later time. Now, you can filter messages by polls, just like you can for photos, videos or links. On the ‘Chats’ screen, press ‘Search’ and then ‘Polls’ to find a list of all results.
• Stay updated on poll results: You will now receive notifications when people vote on your polls, so you can easily keep up to date on responses.

Forwarding with Captions

Sharing photos on WhatsApp is one of the easiest ways of keeping friends and family updated on your life, and the ability to forward media means you can quickly reshare images from one group of connections to another. But sometimes you might not have time to add context before someone responds.

Now when you forward media that has a caption, you have the option to keep, delete or completely rewrite it to give extra information when sharing photos between chats. You can also add a caption to photos and videos when you forward them.

Sharing Documents with Captions

Just like when sharing images or videos, the documents you share may require a little explanation. Whether it’s when sending a newspaper article or a work document, now you have the option to add a caption before sharing.

These updates have started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

Last year, we introduced the ability for users globally to message seamlessly across all their devices, while maintaining the same level of privacy and security.

Today, we’re improving our multi-device offering further by introducing the ability to use the same WhatsApp account on multiple phones.

A feature highly requested by users, now you can link your phone as one of up to four additional devices, the same as when you link with WhatsApp on web browsers, tablets and desktops. Each linked phone connects to WhatsApp independently, ensuring that your personal messages, media, and calls are end-to-end encrypted, and if your primary device is inactive for a long period, we automatically log you out of all companion devices.

Linking phones as companion devices makes messaging easier. Now you can switch between phones without signing out and pick up your chats where you left off. Or if you’re a small business owner, additional employees are now able to respond to customers directly from their phones under the same WhatsApp Business account.

This update has started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

Also rolling out over the coming weeks, we’re introducing an alternative and more accessible way to link to companion devices. Now you can enter your phone number on WhatsApp Web to receive a one-time code, which you can use on your phone to enable device linking, rather than having to scan a QR code. We look forward to introducing this feature to more companion devices in the future.

With Disappearing Messages conversations do not have to stick around forever – just like in person discussions. While this extra layer of privacy protects messages from falling into the wrong hands, sometimes there’s that occasional voice note or key piece of information you want to keep.

Today we’re introducing “Keep in Chat,” so you can hang on to texts you need for later, with a special superpower for the sender. We believe if you’ve sent the message, it’s your choice whether others in the chat can keep it for later.

To make this work, the sender will be notified when someone keeps a message, and the sender will have the ability to veto the decision. If you’ve decided your message can’t be kept by others, your decision is final, no one else can keep it and the message will be deleted when the timer expires. This way you have the final say on how messages you send are protected.

Messages you’ve saved on your WhatsApp will be noted with a bookmark icon and you can see these messages, organized by chat, in the Kept Messages folder.

We hope people enjoy this new update and the flexibility to keep the messages they need. This will roll out globally over the next few weeks.

When we share what we’re working on here it's usually about new features or products we're building. Today we’re writing about a troubling development in the United Kingdom that everyone needs to know about.

The UK government is currently considering new legislation that opens the door to trying to force technology companies to break end-to-end encryption on private messaging services. The law could give an unelected official the power to weaken the privacy of billions of people around the world.

We don’t think any company, government or person should have the power to read your personal messages and we’ll continue to defend encryption technology. We’re proud to stand with other technology companies in our industry pushing back against the misguided parts of this law that would make people in the UK and around the world less safe.

—

To anyone who cares about safety and privacy on the internet.

As end-to-end-encrypted communication services, we urge the UK Government to address the risks that the Online Safety Bill poses to everyone's privacy and safety. It is not too late to ensure that the Bill aligns with the Government's stated intention to protect end-to-end encryption and respect the human right to privacy.

Around the world, businesses, individuals and governments face persistent threats from online fraud, scams and data theft. Malicious actors and hostile states routinely challenge the security of our critical infrastructure. End-to-end encryption is one of the strongest possible defenses against these threats, and as vital institutions become ever more dependent on internet technologies to conduct core operations, the stakes have never been higher.

As currently drafted, the Bill could break end-to-end encryption,opening the door to routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages of friends, family members, employees, executives, journalists, human rights activists and even politicians themselves, which would fundamentally undermine everyone’s ability to communicate securely.

The Bill provides no explicit protection for encryption, and if implemented as written, could empower OFCOM to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services - nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.

In short, the Bill poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world, while emboldening hostile governments who may seek to draft copy-cat laws.

Proponents say that they appreciate the importance of encryption and privacy while also claiming that it's possible to surveil everyone's messages without undermining end-to-end encryption. The truth is that this is not possible.

We aren’t the only ones who share concerns about the UK Bill. The United Nations has warned that the UK Government’s efforts to impose backdoor requirements constitute “a paradigm shift that raises a host of serious problems with potentially dire consequences”.

Even the UK Government itself has acknowledged the privacy risks that the text of the Bill poses, but has said its “intention” isn’t for the Bill to be interpreted this way.

Global providers of end-to-end encrypted products and services cannot weaken the security of their products and services to suit individual governments. There cannot be a “British internet,” or a version of end-to-end encryption that is specific to the UK.

The UK Government must urgently rethink the Bill, revising it to encourage companies to offer more privacy and security to its residents, not less. Weakening encryption, undermining privacy, and introducing the mass surveillance of people’s private communications is not the way forward.

Signed by those who care about keeping our conversations secure:

Matthew Hodgson, CEO, Element

Alex Linton, Director, OPTF/Session

Meredith Whittaker, President, Signal

Martin Blatter, CEO, Threema

Ofir Eyal, CEO, Viber

Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp at Meta

Alan Duric, CTO, Wire

At WhatsApp, we believe that your messages should be as private and secure as an in-person conversation. Protecting your personal messages with default end-to-end encryption is the foundation of that security, and we'll never stop building new features to give you extra layers of privacy, and more control over your messages.

A lot of this work happens behind the scenes without you having to do a thing. Today, we’re excited to tell you about some of the additional security features we’ll be adding in the coming months.

Account Protect: If you need to switch your WhatsApp account to a new device – we want to double check that it’s really you. From now on, we may ask you on your old device to verify that you want to take this step as an extra security check. This feature can help alert you to an unauthorized attempt to move your account to another device.

Device Verification: Mobile device malware is one of the biggest threats to people’s privacy and security today because it can take advantage of your phone without your permission and use your WhatsApp to send unwanted messages. To help prevent this, we have added checks to help authenticate your account - with no action needed from you - and better protect you if your device is compromised. This lets you continue using WhatsApp uninterrupted. Go deeper on the tech here.

Automatic Security Codes: Our most security conscious users have always been able to take advantage of our security code verification feature, which helps ensure you are chatting with the intended recipient. You can check this manually by going to the encryption tab under a contact’s info. To make this process easier and more accessible to everyone, we’re rolling out a security feature based on a process called “Key Transparency” that allows you to automatically verify that you have a secure connection. What it means for you is that when you click on the encryption tab, you’ll be able to verify right away that your personal conversation is secured. For those interested in going deeper into the tech, click here.

These are three additional ways we’re helping secure your account. While there’s many things we can do to make security easy for everyone, there are two features that only you can turn on: two-step verification and use of end-to-end encrypted backups. If you’re already using both, please tell your friends about them so more people can benefit from these layers of security too.

We hope people enjoy the increased security these features offer, and we look forward to announcing more updates soon.