In these last weeks, WhatsApp was focusing to improve the chat search feature. They have already implemented some general (not visible) improvements, but today we are ready to announce something new for it.
This upcoming feature will be available for everyone, in future, for any iOS beta user that joined the TestFlight beta program in the next iOS updates. Be sure to keep your WhatsApp beta updated!
- The Advanced Search feature is not available yet.
- WhatsApp is working very hard in order to add this feature, adding new important improvements in the next updates. You don’t see it yet for development reasons and the feature needs to get many other improvements before to be enabled for everyone.
For this reason, it’s ok if you have updated your WhatsApp version and it’s not available for you seen that the feature is under development. - Details about the iOS beta program are available here (unfortunately the beta program is full right now..).
- You can check out our TestFlight Page to daily check availability for new WhatsApp beta slotsand to accept invites for other iOS beta apps!
- If you want to be alerted with push notifications, when a new slot for testing WhatsApp beta for iOS is available, you can consider to join our Discord: you will receive a push notification when a new slot is available.
- I’m publishing iOS screenshots, but the feature will be available for Android as well.
While WhatsApp is developing a Dark Mode (for iOS and Android), the team is currently working on new features to improve the app.
I suppose you use the Search feature every day, to find text messages and chats. Today I present the new Advanced Search mode and, as you can understand by reading its name, it is an evolution of the current Search feature.
Let’s take a look together, so we can understand better what we are talking about!
The new Advanced Search feature allows to search multiple types of messages.
As you can see, you will be able to search between Photos, GIFs, Videos, Documents, Links and Audio. This screen reports how many media files are stored in your WhatsApp Storage: so your results can be now filtered by media!
The new Advanced Search feature also reports your Search History (that can be easily deleted, using “Clear”).
If you tap a media file, for example Photos, WhatsApp will show all messages that contain an image!
The results also include a nice preview, so you do not need to open the search result in order to see it. You can continue to filter these results by typing something else in the search bar.
The same happens if you tap GIFs or Documents:
Tapping Links, WhatsApp will present all shared Links in your chats and groups, with a preview:
Tapping Audio, all voice messages will be shown. Unfortunately the feature is still under development, so the audio preview is not available yet (even if we count to see it when the feature will be enabled).
No news about Locations and vCards, actually.
As mentioned in our “Important Notice”, this feature will be available for Android as well: just wait, please!
I want to point it out again because all my followers are angry that iOS has more features. I understand that WhatsApp for iOS is receiving more features but, excluding the Screen Lock feature, everything is not available yet on iOS.
Good things coming in WhatsApp. We already saw Screen Lock enabled, we know they are developing a Group Invitation System and Dark Mode is coming in next releases. It will be a good 2019!
