Amayzine

The 5 things you want from WhatsApp

may calling with her phone on the street

Things are really going in the right direction with WhatsApp. For example, there is the feature where you can't just be thrown into a group, which we are very happy about. But there are still some areas for improvement. I'll list them briefly, and additions are welcome.

1. Do not show deleted as such
Because when you see four deleted messages, you think: what was there that apparently wasn't meant for my eyes? So keep the delete function, but don't show that something has been deleted.

2. After ‘delete for myself’, still keep the option to delete it for the other person as well
Nothing human is alien to us, and you sometimes type something that you think: that doesn't come out quite right, I'll delete it for a moment. But in the rush and tension, it can happen that you press the ‘delete for myself’ button while you meant ‘delete for everyone’. And that can no longer be done. Unless you confiscate that other person's phone, but that's a bit much. Anyway, work to be done, WhatsApp team.

3. Do not mention ‘forwarded’
For example, I send a nice picture of our kids to my beloved and then to my parents. Then they get the label ‘forwarded’. In other words: second choice. It feels less special. So away with that ‘forwarded’, what does it matter.

4. Turn off ‘typing’
Although I also find it very nice when I, especially on my web WhatsApp, see that multiple people are typing and I will receive many messages, I also find it annoying sometimes. If it's a bit businesslike, for example, the other person doesn't need to see how long I'm typing to come to the right answer.

5. WhatsApp out of office
Because we are using WhatsApp more and more for business, I think it would be nice to have a WhatsApp ‘out of office’ so that the sender knows they won't receive a reply for a while. Or even better: a customized out of office where you ‘excuse’ your friends from an out of office. Apparently, you can have this in WhatsApp Business, but we want the feature in our app too.

Anyway, dear people of WhatsApp... I'm really happy with you.