The update also brings some UI changes as well

Jul 23, 2015 21:11 GMT  ·  By

Popular instant messenger WhatsApp has just been updated with new features and improvements, which bring additional options for Android users.

However, it looks like the new features are not yet available to everyone, since the newest version of WhatsApp has yet to be released in Google Play Store.

The good news is you can now download the APK file and manually install the latest WhatsApp Messenger release, which should be 2.12.197.

Keep in mind, though, that in order to benefit from the new features, you will need at least WhatsApp Messenger version 2.12.194.

Any versions lower than this will not comprise all the new features and improvements that we're going to mention further.

First of all, there's a new option that will allow you to mark a conversation as unread. Simply touch and hold your finger on a conversation and choose the appropriate option from the contextual menu.

Mute notifications for a contact or group

Also, in the Settings menu, WhatsApp users now have a new option at their disposal which when enabled will lower data usage when using voice calling options. Simply enable the “Low data usage” in order to benefit from this new feature.

Furthermore, the latest update also adds custom notification sounds for individual contacts, but also for group conversations as well.

There's also another interesting new option that will allow you to mute notifications from a contact for a certain period of time.

You can do that by opening that contact's detail page and enable the Mute option, then choose the timeframe offered in the contextual menu: 8 hours, 1 week or 1 year. This feature is available for groups as well.

Last but not least, you can now see how much data has been used after you backup WhatsApp to Google Drive. This option is making a comeback to WhatsApp since it was available in previous versions, but got removed at some point.

WhatsApp Messenger screenshots (7 Images)

WhatsApp Messenger for Android
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