If you’ve toyed with some of thebest video player appsandour favorite entertainment apps on Android, you would know how they offer several features like playback speed, closed captioning, and audio sync controls. In comparison, the media player utilities in messaging apps like WhatsApp are just enough to get the job done. Meta is now beta testing tap-to-seek features in the WhatsApp media player to enhance its ease of use.
WhatsApp has a built-in media player so that it doesn’t redirect you to an installed app on your device, just to play videos you receive from friends and group chats. However, this media player is rather rudimentary, with tap-to-play/pause controls and a duration progress bar underneath. Skipping forward or going backwards is a little unintuitive, because you need to tap the screen for the progress bar to show up, and then tap the playback progress at a suitable point to seek forward or backwards. Although a fully feature-loaded experience inspired by a purpose-built video player like VLC would be a big ask, Meta needs to improve WhatsApp’s media player.
A few beta testers running WhatsApp version 2.23.24.6 have spotted new gesture controls for the app’s video player utility.WABetaInfotesters explain that when watching a video you sent or received, you can skip forward ten seconds by double-tapping the right-hand side of your screen, and skip backwards ten seconds tapping the left-hand side. These shortcuts instantly remind us of the YouTube app for Android, which also allows skipping 10 seconds in either direction by double-tapping.
Tap-to-seek is an efficient way to rewatch a few seconds of the video if you missed a part, or skip the fluff and get straight to the important bits. It’s a lot easier than tapping the playback progress bar, especially considering how it scales dynamically depending on the length of the video you’re watching. The implementation is familiar and intuitive, so getting habituated to it quickly should not be a problem for most WhatsApp users.
However, it is available only to a few beta testers through the Google Play Store right now. If other feature releases are a suitable yardstick, a wider beta release should precede the worldwide stable channel rollout. This is one of those features we cannot wait to see.
WhatsApp is also working on several other innovative additions to the Android app, such as support foralternate profilesvisible to people who aren’t allowed to see your profile picture, andAI integrationto assist with your support queries.Bigger visual design changeslike a bottom-aligned tab bar and new colors for message bubbles are also in the pipeline. Together, these updates could drastically enhance WhatsApp’s appearance and usability in the coming months.
