Summary
- WhatsApp is evolving its media sharing preview feature, improving the experience by providing more clarity.
- The new preview feature is still in beta but will provide a thumbnail when media is shared as files.
- This is now rolling out in beta, but should be available to regular users soon.
WhatsApp is always evolving, making it one of the best secure messaging apps in 2024. Not only do you get encrypted chat, but you can also use the app for phone and video calls as well. Sometimes, as more features get added, there’s a tendency to forget about improving features that were introduced at an earlier point. Luckily, that doesn’t seem to be the case here, as WhatsApp is now making improvements to its media sharing feature, which will now show previews for media attached as files, to make things clearer for users.
The new update was spotted by the folks at WABetaInfo, while checking out the latest Android beta update that comes in as version 2.24.9.8. While it isn’t the most exciting update, the small change is going to go a long way, bringing better clarity for users while chatting and sharing lots of different types of files. The new preview feature will look just like the old one, and will provide users with a thumbnail image of what to expect. Although we have seen this with images and web pages before, this is now going to be applied to media that’s shared as a file going forward.
A small change that will make a world of difference
So you might be asking why would someone send media as a file instead of just adding it to the chat like normal? Well, there are a number of reasons, but the most important would be quality. Although WhatsApp did add a way to send higher resolution images to people, those are still compressed, which means, if you want to send someone the full resolution, then you need to send the media as a file in order for that to happen.
Typically, when these types of files are sent now, they just have a file name and that’s pretty much. If you’re the receiver, you don’t really have an idea of what to expect, unless you’re told by the sender, and even then, you’d still probably find more peace of mind if you had a preview. You can see an example of the current versus the update in the image above, with the top one being just a file name, and the bottom being a preview of the image being sent.
That’s what this new change aims to fix, and for now, it will only be available for those that are in the WhatsApp beta. Of course, this is going to be a welcome change when it arrives to the public, but if you want to get an early look, you’re going to need to enter the beta for Android using the Google Play Store. And if you’ve never given the app a try, it might be worth taking a look, as it offers so much and makes it easier to communicate with friends, family and colleagues from around the world.
