WhatsApp to add “silent exit” feature: No more awkward departure from groups

WhatsApp users will soon be able to avoid social awkwardness by gracefully, and silently, leaving groups, the company has announced.

As it stands, everyone in a WhatsApp group is informed when a member leaves, which can be embarrassing for smaller groups and annoying for larger ones.

Users will be able to leave a group quietly after the update, which is one in a series coming to WhatsApp over the next month, with only the administrators receiving a notification. The updates, which the company is referring to as "privacy features", also include other features that it claims improve user security, according to The Guardian's report.

With the "view once" setting on WhatsApp, which deletes the image after it has been viewed, users can already send ephemeral messages similar to those on Snapchat. WhatsApp will now try to prevent screenshots of those messages by borrowing another Snapchat feature. According to WhatsApp, the feature is in testing and will be made available to users "soon".

Since users can always take a screenshot of the screen using a different device or view the message on a "rooted" or "jailbroken" device, blocking screenshots does not guarantee security. However, the company hopes to protect user privacy by making it more difficult to save an image that was only meant to exist for a brief period of time.

In a Facebook post announcing the changes, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the business that owns WhatsApp, said: "We'll keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations."

Ami Vora, head of product at WhatsApp, added, "We believe WhatsApp is the most secure place to have a private conversation. And to spread the word about these new features, we're also kicking off a global campaign, starting with the UK and India, to educate people about how we work to protect their private conversations on WhatsApp."