WhatsApp updates group voice calls with range of new features

(Jonathan Brady/PA) (PA Archive)

WhatsApp has updated group voice calls with a range of features.

The new tools are intended to combat the many frustrations with WhatsApp’s group call feature – including people joining and then making too much noise, or joining without you realising at all.

The changes come after a year of improvements to WhatsApp, which has in recent months introduced new tools such as ways of moving conversations between Android and iPhone devices.

Now it has revealed the new changes to group voice calls, itself a relatively new and often updated feature.

The changes bring a new banner notification when someone joins a group voice call. Previously, it was possible to miss somebody joining a call if the conversation was large and offscreen, meaning that you could be speaking to someone without realising.

Now, a large banner notification will come up, alerting people to the fact that somebody has joined a call. That will happen even in big chats and when someone is not shown in the list of names on screen.

WhatsApp will also add the option to mute other people. That means that their background noise or other distractions will be muted too.

Zoom, for instance, has had a similar feature for some time, allowing the hosts of chats to force other participants to be muted. It means that if a person is in a noisy environment, for example, everyone else in the chat will not have to hear them.

And perhaps most significant of all is the option to message other participants within a voice call. Users will be able to quickly open up a chat with just one person, from the conversation itself.

That should make it easy to raise specific issues, without joining in with the often frenzied noise of a large video call.