How to Set Up a WhatsApp Username for More Privacy and Simplicity

What­sApp, the Meta-owned mes­sag­ing giant, is work­ing on a new fea­ture that will let you choose unique user­names for your accounts. Accord­ing to WABetaIn­fo, the beta ver­sion of What­sApp for Android now includes an option for users to set up a What­sApp user­name in the pro­file sec­tion of the app.

This new fea­ture brings What­sApp clos­er to Insta­gram, anoth­er Meta-owned app, where user­names have been used for com­mu­ni­ca­tion for a long time. While it is unclear how user­names will work on What­sApp, they could poten­tial­ly change the way peo­ple con­nect on the plat­form and improve their pri­va­cy. Users will no longer need to share their phone num­bers or QR codes to chat, as a user­name may be enough. More­over, What­sApp chats start­ed by user­name will still be encrypt­ed end-to-end.

This lat­est update fol­lows anoth­er high­ly antic­i­pat­ed fea­ture release: mes­sage edit­ing. What­sApp users can now edit a mes­sage with­in 15 min­utes of send­ing it, with the word “edit­ed” appear­ing next to the time­stamp. Addi­tion­al­ly, the app has launched “Chat Lock” in May, a tool that lets users lock spe­cif­ic one-on-one or group chats with their pass­word or bio­met­ric scan, pre­vent­ing mes­sages from show­ing up as notifications.

Although What­sApp has not con­firmed the release date or details of its new user­name fea­ture, it is like­ly to be offered first to beta users before rolling out to all devices. With these updates, What­sApp is con­tin­u­ing to enhance its plat­form to pro­vide users with more con­ve­nience and pri­va­cy in their mes­sag­ing experience.