Now that WhatsApp is finally available as a proper app for the Apple Watch, Meta is working on a way to inform users when their account is paired with the accessory. The company is also working on a better chat, attachment, and storage management interface. Here are the details.
Connected peripherals
As spotted by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp’s build number 25.37.10.71 on TestFlight introduced a new category called “Peripherals” in the Linked Devices interface.
The test comes just weeks after WhatsApp released a proper Apple Watch app, a change that also introduces new avenues for potential misuse.
In abusive relationships, for example, an account could be paired to a partner’s Apple Watch without the user’s knowledge.
To address this and similar risks, the latest WhatsApp beta adds more transparency around connected peripherals.
As with other linked devices, “Peripherals” displays the name of the Apple Watch associated with the account, along with the date and time it was last active.
However, unlike other linked devices such as Macs and WhatsApp Web, it is currently impossible to unlink the paired Apple Watch from the iOS app. Instead, the app simply instructs the user to “Delete WhatsApp from your Apple Watch to unpair.”
Clear chat
Just a few days after releasing TestFlight build number 25.37.10.71, Meta released another build with a new feature designed to simplify chat management and storage.
As also spotted by WABetaInfo, build 25.37.10.72 introduces “a feature to clear chat storage with options for deleting messages or specific media categories”.
This feature presents a more streamlined interface for clearing all messages in a chat, removing all messages except starred ones, or deleting media files, while clearly showing how much storage each category uses.
When selecting “Clear media files…”, users can choose which categories to delete, including documents, photos, videos, stickers, and audio, before confirming their selection.
They also have the option to clear all media at once, including starred media.
There’s no ETA for either feature, though the Clear chat test follows a similar rollout in the Android beta, suggesting it could arrive sooner rather than later.
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