Last year, a new report disclosed a WhatsApp feature that would allow users to send and receive messages from multiple devices such as a laptop or a secondary phone without logging out of the primary device. Today, that capability has been confirmed by WhatsApp head Will Cathcart along with other upcoming features that were shared by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well.
Cathcart confirmed to WaBetaInfo that multi-device support is rolling out in public beta in the next month or two. The feature is designed to sync up to four devices from which you can access your account. You can also use WhatsApp without an internet connection on your primary device.
Zuckerberg also backed up Cathcart"s statement and noted the "technical challenge to get all your messages and content to sync". He added that the feature won"t affect end-to-end encryption that WhatsApp provides for all messages sent between users.
While Cathcart didn"t specifically confirm that WhatsApp is working on an iPad app, the multi-device feature will support WhatsApp on Apple"s tablet. In addition, the upcoming public beta is also being planned to expand to more iOS users.
Finally, Zuckerberg also shared a new “view once” feature that will make messages you send disappear after being viewed by the recipient. WhatsApp is also launching "disappearing mode" soon. The service already has a disappearing messages feature that deletes messages in a specific chat after a set period of time. With disappearing mode, you can enable disappearing messages across all chat conversations automatically. There"s no word, though, on when these two capabilities will launch for everyone, but they"re coming to beta users soon.
Source: WaBetaInfo