The advent of rich link previews for URLs sent on modern messaging apps has made Rickrolling, among other malevolent acts, much harder to do. However, when it comes to status updates on WhatsApp, if someone drops a link in theirs, curious users clicking on them have nothing but faith to go on. That might change soon, though.

WABetaInfo reports from the latest betas for various device clients that WhatsApp is working on generating rich previews for links when they're shared as part of a status update.

A side-by-side comparison of the current WhatsApp link preview, and the expected future version.
Links as seen in the current implementation of WhatsApp text status updates (left), and one with rich previews seen in a beta.
Source: WABetaInfo

This screenshot from the iOS version shows that users will still see the URL in plain text form, but a card will accompany it with a header image, the site title, a description, and the URL again. Viewers will only see the preview card if the user writing the status update allows a few seconds for it to generate, so that may mean that even if this feature were to roll out officially, not all links in status updates would receive a rich preview card. We'd generally be warier of tapping on those, but that's just us.

whatsapp-text-status-update-rich-preview-desktop
Source: WABetaInfo

The card generally looks the same on the desktop client, if only with more room to spare. You can see an example in the screenshot above.

The Android app already generates some form of rich preview for links in text status updates, but it's not as detailed as what's seen above in the betas. It's expected that these changes will indeed make their way to the Android side at some point in the future.

UPDATE: 2022/05/19 14:10 EST BY STEPHEN SCHENCK

Android progress

It's still not yet available, but WABetaInfo has spotted further evidence towards this feature's development on Android is starting to appear in the latest WhatsApp beta.