Meta's pace of adding new features to WhatsApp has greatly increased over the last year. The messaging service is announcing significant enhancements to its platform almost every month. At the end of 2022, WhatsApp rolled out an improved group calling experience. Then, over the last two months, the app gained support for proxy servers and WhatsApp status got a big revamp with voice notes and more. Now, following the release of WhatsApp Communities in November 2022, the messaging service is rolling out some new features to enhance the group chatting experience.

Firstly, WhatsApp is giving admins greater control over who can join a group. The next time you share a group invite link, you (the admin) can manually approve new participants who can join the group. You'll get the same option when you make a group inside a community accessible to all.

Secondly, you can now easily see the common groups you share with another contact instead of trying to remember them yourself. For this, you only need to search for the contact's name, with WhatsApp showing all the common groups in the search results. This is a small change, but if you are a part of several groups with your work colleagues, school friends, and gym buddies, this change makes it easier to find the right group.

In its announcement, WhatsApp says that the changes will start rolling out in the coming weeks, so they might not appear immediately after installing the latest app update from the Play Store.

WhatsApp is beta testing several new features, including blocking calls from unknown numbers, self-destructing group chats, support for Unicode 15.0 emoji, and more. Given how quickly the company is rolling out new features nowadays, they should make their way to the stable channel sooner than later.