WhatsApp adds two-step authentication to beta app

Whenever an online service adds two-factor authentication, we encourage you to enable it. WhatsApp gets a version of that in its beta app (at least starting version 2.16.341). It isn’t the two-factor authentication you know but it at least offers a form of security. Since WhatsApp uses your phone number to log into your account. Someone can gain access to it if they take your phone. What two-step authentication does is let you create a six-digit PIN you need to enter every time you log into your account alongside your phone number.

Source: Lifehacker

WhatsApp adds GIFs support

Feel like GIFs are the only or easier way you can communicate these days? If you use WhatsApp regularly, that feature is now available to you. You can opt to get GIFs from the likes of Giphy and Tenor or create your own six-second GIFs and convert on iOS Live Photos. As you can tell, the feature is first available on iOS but is said to be coming to Android soon.

WhatsApp tests its own Snapchat Stories clone

If this ever make its way out of testing, another Facebook-owned app will be getting the Snapchat Stories treatment. WhatsApp is testing what it calls Status, a new feature that will let you share photos and videos you can overlay with emojis and text and it stays up for 24 hours. According to BGR India, the feature is currently available to registered public beta testers of the app using rooted Android or iOS devices.

The app on Android gets a new Status tab between the Chats and Calls tabs. It doesn’t take over your ability to share a status message on the service. What it does is create a new channel for users to share visual content with their contacts. At the moment it doesn’t allow users to manually delete Status updates after they’ve been shared. And they can’t be set to have longer or shorter lifespan online. You can specify which contacts can get the updates. This feature seems to be in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s push to prioritize video content as they try to drive video ad revenue. It’s something that WhatsApp can now take advantage of as it changed its privacy policy to basically allow business to show ads to users. Now, we have to see if this makes it out of beta.

Source: TechCrunch

WhatsApp beta gets OneDrive message backup on Windows phones

If you’re looking for a way to securely store your messages and data from the app, WhatsApp released a new update for its beta version on Windows Phone to do just that. The service now lets you safely store data on Microsoft OneDrive. All you need to do to enable the feature is head to Settings > Chat and Security > Backup. From there you can select if you want to backup manually or automatically. With automatic, you can select whether to backup daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also opt to just upload backups while you’re on Wi-Fi and not on cellular data. A stable version of this should hopefully show up in the future.

Source: WinBeta