WhatsApp update features: Custom notifications, Mark as Unread, Low Data

The beta update, first spotted by Android Police, brings in new features like custom notifications, Mark As Unread, and low data usage among others.

You can now mark conversations as unread so as to give you a visual reminder in case you want to respond to your contacts later. In it is the option to mute the chat for 8 hours, 1 week, or 1 year, as well as extensive custom notifications.

This switches the message status to green but doesn’t affect the read messages status inside the chat or its chronological rank among your conversations.

The new version also lets you set custom notifications for contacts and groups.

If you can’t wait to try out the new features, you can download the update file manually, though you have to ensure that your Android device allows downloads from unknown sources (which can be found in the Security area of the Settings menu). When you are on a very limited data plan, enabling this option would help you save the bytes.

It is expected the update will roll out to iOS and Android users in the coming days.

Finally, there’s good news if you like to use WhatsApp voice calling service. Every couple of weeks, the team surprises us with new features, and keeps on refining them and improving the app’s functionality. A new “Low data usage” option is now available on the settings of the app, which will reduce the amount of data used during a WhatsApp call.

The last mentioned feature too is inspired from Facebook’s Lite version, and is targeted at developing countries where data connection isn’t that fast or expensive.