WhatsApp is constantly adding new features and improving the quality of life according to user requests. Recently, we’ve seen backlash for a social messaging app that allows people to quickly interact with messages without having to type anything. Now, Meta seems to be adding a very useful configuration to WhatsApp that allows people to hide their online status.

Even though WhatsApp already allows you to hide your Last Online status, this is not a perfect app as someone can still open a chat window with you and watch when you are online. This is especially problematic if someone is following you or even if you want to avoid interacting with anyone but still be able to see your messages.

According to trusted resource WABetaInfo, Meta solves this problem by providing a configuration that lets you decide how visible you want your online status to be. The output describes the detected variants as follows, which can also be seen in the screenshot at the top of the article:

With two new options, “Everyone” and “Same as Last”, you’ll be able to customize who can see when we’re online right in our last visit settings. For example, selecting My Contacts for Recently Visited and Same as Recently Visited for Online means that people without their contacts won’t be able to see that you’re online.

While the options in the current app are pretty limited, it’s possible that Meta will expand them to cover more use cases before this feature becomes public.

While the screenshot obtained by WABetaInfo is from the iOS app, it’s natural to assume that the feature will also come to Android, web, and desktop at some point. With all that said, there is no availability information yet as this feature has not been added to the WhatsApp Beta app. Source