Meta-owned WhatsApp is likely now automatically turning off the option of “media visibility” for disappearing chats on WhatsApp for
Android, which let people view media in their phone’s gallery.
According to WA BetaInfo, the new move is to ensure a better privacy experience when using disappearing messages and to help keep media more private in disappearing chat threads.
In addition, the messaging platform is also
rolling out the same change on WhatsApp for iOS, where the option “Save to Camera Roll” is automatically turned off for disappearing chats. In this case, images, videos and GIFs are
never automatically saved in a user’s camera roll if the general setting is enabled.
Users can still save media manually in disappearing chats. Some users on certain versions of Android already have an option to manually save media, the report said. On WhatsApp for iOS, users can save media as normally users do.
The changes are rolled out to all users on
beta and public builds and full activation to everyone may happen within the next 24 hours.