One of the best instant messengers, WhatsApp is planning on releasing a crucial update on its app that allows users to add up to 1024 participants in a particular group. With the upcoming update, WhatsApp will increase to 1024 group limits. and adds pending group participants.
Around August, WhatsApp adds new privacy features which include restricting screenshots and blocking past participants and online status. In less than 5months, WhatsApp increases group members from 512 members to 1024 members.
However, the group limit increment is obviously for an unspecific number of beta testers and the functionality is accessible on WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS. While WhatsApp might have not officially released for all, you can check yours to confirm.
To do this, simply create a group or add new members to an existing one in WhatsApp to see if the feature is active for your account. In this tab, users can see the limit that has been set for their account. WhatsApp recently adds 8 participants in voice/video calls.
On the other hand, the WhatsApp pending group participants are also an upcoming feature that was available in the recent WhatsApp beta version, including the TestFlight build. It is also rumored that the feature will find its way to the future version of the iOS beta app.
The pending group participants feature is where all applicants for group membership are readily visible to group administrators, and only the admin of the group can approve new members at any time. Admin will the list of the pending members and may choose to / not to add them to the group.
To see the pending group participants, Admin can click inside the group page and there’ll be an added section inside the group details called “Pending Participants” it can either be turned on or off.
When turned on, members can’t just join a group automatically, even via a group invite link, and whenever a user joins a WhatsApp group through an invite link, Admin is the only member of a group that can approve that invitation after seeing your request to join.
This is practically making a group in WhatsApp private, something which is similar to Facebook’s private group, where the admins of a group are the only members that can approve that invitation. Probably, we don’t know if this will have an expiry date or if it may stay till whenever the admin feels like approving the invitation.
While the increased 1024 participants are rolling out to some beta testers on WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS, the “Pending Participants” is still under development, and it will probably be a while before beta users can access them.
