WhatsApp is one of the most active applications of the past year. Meta, which is in strong competition against Telegram, made the following decision: Start implementing new and revolutionary features in WhatsAppand the truth is they were pleased. HD images have arrived, design change, channels, messages to ourselves, finally multi-account and multi-platform and message editing have arrived, among many other improvements.

But until 2024 Meta is already preparing news, username is one of them. It will be another feature inspired by what Telegram and many other social networks allow you to do, and as well as being more convenient for searching for contacts, it will also mean improved privacy.

We can find someone who is not on the agenda by their username

Until now, when we created or restored an account on WhatsApp, we could give ourselves a username. It is one of the first steps we take in the configuration process and is especially useful when we are in a group.

This way, group participants can see our name next to our phone number if they haven’t added us as a contact. It is a way to facilitate communication in groups where we are not on everyone’s agenda.

But last year it turned out that WhatsApp was trying to add usernames like Telegram, X, Instagram or Threads: ‘at’ followed by our name. This allows you to search for users by name rather than phone number.

This is because the name on WhatsApp becomes our unique identifier., as a username or nickname that other users can find in the WhatsApp search engine as in other social networks or Telegram. Therefore, if we want to send our communication to a person, we need to tell him our username and not our number.

Now, This is a feature being tested in iOS beta -As we can read on WABetainfo- and in the latest versions of this beta it offers the possibility to choose our username for WhatsApp to verify.

In this way, the platform ensures that the name is unique and This is one of the problems we may experience when the update is active on WhatsApp. for everyone. The app has over 2 billion users and choosing a unique name can become a complicated process.

In any case, it is a function that can be very welcome, considering these advances in privacy and, above all, the ease of finding a person.

We have to wait for WhatsApp to implement this in the final versions and start trying it on Android. And yes, if we want to be one of the first to get a username to our liking, we will need to make sure that it reaches all regions and systems at the same time.

Cover image | Bing Image Builder

via | Android Police

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