No, no, I wish WhatsApp engineers would find a way to prevent part of our fingers from accidentally getting too close to the camera and then appearing on one of the sides of the photo or video we’re taking. No, I actually have something much simpler in mind, but that’s what it will mean great news for these users who are in the habit of using the WhatsApp client’s photo and video capture feature and then sharing them through the same service.

Until now, the WhatsApp camera function has worked as follows: by pressing the shutter button (the button shown in the center of the bottom of the screen) you will take a photo, while to record a video we will have to keep the finger pressed to record the whole time. While this might sound original and might even make sense if we’re talking about physical control, in this context it feels like a mistake in every way.

For example, if you hold your mobile with one hand, you will have to force the position of it a lot press and hold the phone firmly at the same time. In addition, it makes it impossible for you to place your mobile phone to record (for example on a tripod) and let it go to record alone or in company. In short, it may sound good in concept, but in practice it is a solution that is completely at odds with usability.

Fortunately, those responsible for the company decided to put an end to such nonsense and as we can read in WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is testing a new “hands-free” video recording mode, this means that it will no longer be necessary to hold the button down for its entire duration. To this end, as we can see in the image above, and like many other camera applications already offer, we can choose between a photo and a video before performing the desired action. This way, we will only need to press to start recording and we will no longer have to worry about the phone until we want to stop it.

As we can read, this new camera function It was already in development last year, so it was expected to launch earlier, but for unknown reasons, it has not yet started testing in the public beta versions of WhatsApp. Of course, when I’m looking to explain things, I’d start by asking what Meta had in mind up until now to maintain such a reprehensible design in terms of usability.