To make something more personalized, it needs to be customizable. And this is what WhatsApp is trying to do.
It has been for a long time that WhatsApp users are presented with a user experience that is simple and intuitive, packed in a lightweight and versatile messaging app. Backed by the social giant Facebook, it's no wonder that the app is extremely popular.
But when it comes to customization, WhatsApp was kind of strict.
For example, users could only change wallpaper globally.
While users can already set custom wallpapers for WhatsApp chats, but the same wallpaper should be shown in all chats across the app.
This is changing, as the popular messaging app is finally upping its wallpaper game.
The first update here, is allowing users to assign different wallpapers to individual chats.
The instant messaging service said that there’s no limit on how many different custom wallpapers users could choose to assign to different chats.
“Make your chats personal and distinguishable by using a custom wallpaper for your most important chats and favorite people, and you never need worry about sending the wrong message in the wrong chat ever again,” the Facebook-owned service said.
To show how serious it is in allowing customization, WhatsApp that is used by more than 2 billion users, is also rolling out the doodle wallpaper - the default wallpaper - in more colors. The app is also bulking app its selection of wallpapers with more images.
Additionally, users can now set a separate wallpaper which will automatically activate when their phone switches from light to dark mode.
What's so good about this, is the way people can customize the experience of WhatsApp.
As the primary communication app for many people, chances are users will communicate to some people more often than with others. Through this wallpaper customization, users can differentiate these communications visually.
Aesthetic preferences aside, the customization simply makes experience within the app a lot more personal.
Second, besides allowing users to change the wallpaper, WhatsApp is also making it easier for users to quickly search and find stickers with text or emoji, or browse through common categories.
To make use of this, WhatsApp urges sticker creators to tag their stickers with emojis and text moving forward, so their stickers can be more searchable for WhatsApp users..
WhatsApp is rolling the update, together with the World’s Health Organization’s 2020-inspired ‘Together at Home‘ pack with animations.
“Together at Home has been one of the most popular sticker packs across WhatsApp, and will now be even more expressive and useful in its animated form. The ‘Together at Home’ sticker pack is available within WhatsApp, including with text localized for 9 languages – Arabic, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish,” WhatsApp said.