Despite constantly adding new features to the mix, WhatsApp often plays catch up to the competition. Whether it was the introduction ofvoice-based chat rooms within groupsor services likeCommunitiesandChannelsthat have existed on other IM apps for a while. Similarly, back in May, the Meta-owned instant messaging app was revealed to be working on the ability tolet people set a unique usernamefor their account, serving as an alternative to sharing their phone number. A beta version of WhatsApp for Android now reveals further development on this feature by letting users search for individuals through usernames.
While this is certainly not a major feature addition to WhatsApp, it shows WhatsApp usernames are not going anywhere.WABetaInfospotted this change on version2.23.25.19of WhatsApp beta for Android, though I couldn’t see it on my device running beta version2.23.25.20of the chat app.
The ability to search via username (left); The current search bar (right)
The only distinctive change here is the addition ofusernamein the search bar on top, sandwiched between the wordsnameandnumber. The extra word in there does make the search field a little crowded, though, as the screenshot above shows.
For what it’s worth, my WhatsApp account (on beta) doesn’t yet have the ability to set a username here in India, let alone search for accounts with this method. This likely means that its visibility is limited to a few accounts at the moment, possibly based on geography. When widely available, usernames will be optional for account holders and won’t eliminate phone numbers, as WABI notes, while allowing users to remove them whenever they want.
I feel usernames should have long been a part of the WhatsApp toolkit, especially given the risks involved in sharing phone numbers, such as a flood of spam messages from businesses you’ve barely interacted with in the past. Usernames also make discoverability easy, as we see on apps like Telegram, letting you search for people with a few letters rather than punch in their entire number.
There’s no ETA for the rollout of usernames or the newly added search functionality. But given that it’s been in development for over six months now, it’s safe to say this will find its way to the stable channel in a future update.
Staying on the subject of usernames, WhatsApp was also recently working onletting channels add usernamesin a bid to make top channels more easily discoverable by their viewers. Meanwhile, on the privacy front, the stable version of WhatsApp this week introduced a couple of updates to its handyChat Lock functionality, offering an easier way to lock/hide chats, plus letting users set asecret codewithin the search bar to access hidden conversations.
