Although this use was not one that was originally considered for the service, WhatsApp (as well as other mobile instant messaging services) It is used quite often for file sharing. Its most common use is to share photos and videos, but it’s also quite common to use its features to transfer other types of files, from PDFs to spreadsheets, text documents and much more.

So many The use of WhatsApp for this purpose has already spread among many people., although they could use other more appropriate methods depending on the circumstances. The most obvious example, and one that I’ve experienced firsthand on many occasions, is people who are physically next to you but use WhatsApp for this purpose instead of AirDrop for Apple devices. or Nearby Sharing if we’re talking about Android (which, as we told you recently, will soon be renamed Quick Share, in the merger of Google’s service with Samsung’s).

By acting in this way, the distance of one or two meters that separates both the user and the device It becomes a much longer journey, and which is therefore exposed to many other risks, from connection failure to the effects of compromising the security of said connection. We are undoubtedly dealing with a type of misuse, but one so widespread for many people that it seems difficult to reverse it in a short period of time.

Now it seems that Meta, instead of trying to reeducate users, will make more sense for this use. So as we can read in WABetaInfo, Meta is already testing the sharing feature between nearby devices using WhatsApp. At the moment, traces of this feature have been detected in the beta version of the Android app (2.24.2.20), but at the moment it is not ready to work even in the testing phase, so we will have to wait. check if the company has progressed with this feature.

As can be deduced from the images obtained by the media, Its operation should be quite similar to that of Apple and Google services, including security features to ensure reliable transfers between devices. In these images, we can see that said transmission will be encrypted, even though it does not use the usual channel of the service, and that sharing between two devices will not require the sharing of phone numbers as well.

Waiting, as I said, for Meta to move forward with development, testing and implementation of this feature (something I want to think will actually happen), I think it’s another success for the companywhich, as we have already noted several times, has been accelerating since the beginning of 2022 in terms of adding features and improving the features that already exist in WhatsApp, undoubtedly responding to the motivation of not wanting to lose its first position in the market for this type of service.