Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp has rolled out a new feature that will make the platform more useful. The new update v2.16.118 has a quote and reply feature, which allows users to quote an earlier message from a conversation and reply to it, which makes sense considering users earlier had to copy and paste the message and then follow it up with another message.
All that the user needs to do is long press a message from a conversation to get a reply option pop up. On pressing this option, the message will appear as a quote and the users can reply to it. The receiver will get this message with the original one as a quote in a grey box. Along with the reply option, the pop-up will also contain star, delete, forward, and copy options. This feature can be helpful in lengthy conversations in groups, where a topic can be lost quickly.
Earlier this week, the feature was only available in beta for Android users. However, according to recent reports, the feature is now being rolled out to most Android and iOS users through Google Play and Apple Store, respectively.
WhatsApp seems to be on a roll to introduce new features. In March 2016, the messaging platform introduced new text formatting features where users could make their texts stand out in bold and italics. The strike-through formatting option was also introduced. The Facebook-owned instant messaging application also updated its iOS and Android client to include new features like PDF sharing, custom settings to enable or disable media downloads for specific contacts, in-app notification to enable quick replies and more.
Apart from this, WhatsApp also introduced end-to-end encryption for all texts and voice calls sent by users, but that didn't go down too well with security officials who stated that this new feature could be misused by criminals and anti-national elements.
Earlier this year, WhatsApp joined the billion-user club and according to statistics, reported 42 billion messages sent and 1.6 billion photos shared through the app on a given day. That's not all. According to a survey done by a research firm, the messaging app was declared world's most popular messaging app, used in 109 countries, or 55.6 percent of the world.
