The instant messaging app Viber has added a new chat organization feature called Folders that lets you categorize conversations into multiple chat folders. Its parent company, Rakuten, announced that the global rollout of the feature has started, and it will be available to all users running Viber v22.0 (or later) in the next couple of months.
You can create up to five different chat folders, which will appear as pill-shaped icons at the top of the screen. You can rename them as per your liking, mark all chats within a folder as read, and add one-to-one conversations, group chats, channels, and communities to the chat folders.
There is no limit on how many chats you can include in a folder. However, you can assign a single chat to multiple folders. Explaining the purpose behind chat folders, Rakuten said in a press release shared over email:
For example, by keeping all colleagues" chats in a folder labeled ‘work,’ users can easily manage projects and tasks or coordinate a birthday gift for another colleague during the work week. As the weekend hits, folders labeled ‘friends’ or ‘family’ can be set as priority, making it easier to set up dinner for Saturday night or organize a parent’s birthday present in a sibling group chat.
It"s worth noting that chat folders will be available to users with more than 10 chats in the app. They won"t support certain chats such as hidden chats, messages from Viber Pay, businesses, and customer interactions. If not visible, you can activate Folders by tapping on the More button on the main chat screen > Manage Folders.
With that said, Folders isn"t an industry-first offering from the company. The feature has been available on Telegram since 2020, where you can also share your chat folders with other users. Iit"s yet to arrive on one of the biggest messaging platforms, WhatsApp.
The Meta-owned platform currently lets you filter unread messages on the chat screen. WhatsApp is also testing a feature that will let you filter group chats and messages from contacts.