WhatsApp for Android Is Getting iOS-Style Chat Previews — Without the Blue Ticks

WhatsApp has long let you turn read receipts off entirely, but if you keep them on, there is no easy way on Android to see what someone sent you without them knowing you have read it. The notification helps, unless you have already swiped it away or have too many messages piling up. iPhone users have had a workaround for a while now, and it looks like Android users will finally get it too.

On iOS, you can long-press a conversation in the chat list to get a pop-up with its most recent messages, and doing so does not trigger the blue ticks. The window does not scroll, though, so longer messages or lots of them cannot be fully previewed. On Android, long-pressing a chat currently just selects it and shows the top bar with pin, archive, mute, and delete options.

What the Android version will do

A teardown of WhatsApp for Android beta 2.26.44.12 has now revealed code for the same kind of chat previews like on iOS. Long-pressing a conversation will bring up a floating card with the latest messages in the thread, plus a refreshed context menu underneath it.

Peeking at a conversation this way does not send read receipts. And unlike on iOS, you can scroll up inside the preview window to see older messages, without triggering read receipts for any of them either.

Still in development

The feature is still in development and is not available even to public beta testers yet. As usual, there is no word on when it will reach the stable version of the app, and features found in teardowns do not always make it to release. Hopefully this one does, since it would bring the Android app in line with the iOS one, from this point of view at least.

Sources

• GSMArena — WhatsApp is bringing iOS-style chat previews to Android