WhatsApp in a blogpost on Monday announced ‘Chat Lock’, a new feature for users to hide and lock their conversations. The messaging platform said that it aims to allow its users to keep their chats private and secure.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook that the chats will be a hidden in a password protected folder and they won’t show sender or content of message in the notifications.
Elaborating on how the feature works, WhatsApp said in its blogpost, “Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint.“
Users currently can set a lock on WhatsApp but the new feature will allow hiding specific chats with any person or group.
According to the platform, it has started rolling out the feature to users.
The platform pledged to add more features to ‘Chat Lock’ in the coming months, which includes allowing users to set a custom password for their chats which will be different from their device.
Along with end-to-end encryption, disappearing messages, and hiding last seen status, the new chat lock feature will further enhance the privacy of users of the messaging platform.
Here’s how you can enable the new Chat Lock feature:
• Tap on one-on-one or a group chat and choose lock chat option.
• To access the locked chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your phone’s password or biometric.
• The content of locked chats will automatically be hidden in the notifications.
