WhatsApp is about to make replying to status updates easier

WhatsApp introduced its own take on social media ‘stories’ with its revamped Status Updates in 2017. Since then, the WhatsApp feature has been improved a lot, and now even has a dedicated tab in the app for Android smartphones and iPhones. Stories allows users to post quick, temporary updates from their lives to specific or all contacts, all of whom can then reply to the same.

However, the option to reply to others’ WhatsApp Status Updates hasn’t been the easiest to spot for many users. Tucked under a small upwards arrow, users must first swipe up on a Status Update from the bottom to open the keyboard and reply to the story. Not only is the arrow easy to miss, making users less likely to engage with an update and reply to it, but the swipe also takes more effort than a simple tap.

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Now, WhatsApp seems to be working on fixing this. As per WABetaInfo, the app’s latest beta versions for both Android and iOS have introduced a ‘reply bar’ instead of the small arrow.

The reply bar will be a fixed element towards the bottom of the screen and will always be visible on all kinds of Status Updates including text, photos and videos. The bar, which is much more noticeable than the arrow, will both encourage and allow viewers to quickly tap on it and reply to an update.

When will you start seeing the reply bar?

The WhatsApp Status Updates reply bar is currently in beta testing, which means it is only available to those on the Android beta program or the iOS beta via the TestFlight app. With the feature still in testing, stable users must still wait a while before they get the feature in a subsequent update. Thankfully however, this shouldn’t take long.

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Meanwhile if you are on the Android or iOS beta channels for WhatsApp, you can get the reply bar on Status Updates by simply updating your WhatsApp beta app to the latest version. On Android, this is the WhatsApp beta version 2.23.26.3, while on iOS, this is the WhatsApp beta version 23.15.10.72.

WhatsApp is also working on a number of other features which are currently in beta, including the ability to share music playback among multiple users on WhatsApp video calls, and logging in using an email ID instead of a phone number. All these features are expected to come to the app’s stable version soon.