WhatsApp’s revamped rich link previews are starting to roll out
After shamelessly ripping off the Stories feature from Snapchat and adding it to Instagram, Facebook (now Meta) went on to add it to every single one of its social media services. One of them is, of course, WhatsApp. While the feature, dubbed Status, seemed like a peculiar addition at first, it actually went on to become pretty widely used across its two billion active users. Now, WhatsApp wants to make them work better for sharing links — or at least, have links shared in your statuslookbetter.
As spotted byWABetaInfo, WhatsApp has quietly added a new rich link preview feature for your WhatsApp status. Right now, if you share a link to your status, only the link’s plain text will be shown, and a small preview will be shown when you tap on the link. Now, if you’re on the lucky side of the beta, you’ll see a rich preview card show up above your status text. The best way to check if you have this is to go to WhatsApp, open your status, paste a link, and wait for a preview to generate.
While not a particularly useful feature, it’s definitely good to have, since link-only status updates don’t look great right now. WhatsApp has been working on this feature for a while, and it’s beenspotted under developmentbefore it ever reached any users. Plus, it comes as part of awider pushby WhatsApp to make the status feature better overall. Recently, it was also revealed that the app was laying groundwork to let peopleupload voice messages to their status.
Don’t be surprised if you don’t see the new link previews yet. While the feature is rolling out on the beta version, it’s currently an A/B test. If you want to check it out, all you can do right now is download the latest beta version by eitherenrolling in the betaordownloading the APK, cross your fingers, and hope for the best. As it’s usually the case, we’re sure a stable rollout will follow sooner than later.
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