WhatsApp Feature Enhancement 03/2015 - Search Conversation

Okay, so looks like the more you use WhatsApp, the more you think it can be made better for improving user experience. Well, okay, maybe that's my view, and some others may hopefully agree too.

We already mentioned about "Having a Private Group" and "Easily restoring messages", for organizing messages. While the folks may still be thinking about this (hopefully!), this might still not make it convenient enough, given the increasing volume of messages one can be subjected to, especially, if you subscribe to groups.

So, this brings up the question: How come there's no search option/feature in WhatsApp? It would be so much easier, to have a search option to search by message keywords and/or by the name of the user or date.

While arguably, a bulk of messages on this popular chat app are the forwards and like, often there are meaningful messages, that you would like to go back to, or access at a point later. While this could be saved elsewhere, it would be convenient to be able to search for it, if needed.

Alternatively, or as an extension to what was described in the post on "Having a Private Group", it would also be cool to be able to tag messages in a way, to be able to find them more easily.

Anybody listening out there? (Hope so).

If you (reader) like this, do vote for it or put in your comments. May be that'll get us heard.

Disclaimer: This is not an official WhatsApp Enhancement tracker/publisher, but since it was hard to get in touch with the WhatsApp guys, I just put this down by myself. Maybe someone will help to take this to them. Cheers.

WhatsApp Feature Enhancement 02/2015 - Restoring Messages

So, there's no doubt that WhatsApp is THE most popular messaging app these days. And, while it does do a good job, there are some things which potentially can be added or done better.

One might assume, that everyone today has a smartphone, and that they have WhatsApp and are happy about it. Well, hopefully, that's true for a lot - but it's not so for a lot many too. And, it does take time to move stuff from an old generation phone to a new generation one, as I recently discovered.


Easier option to restore messages:
Recently around May/June this year, I migrated from an older phone (alright, i'll admit it was an old Nokia E63!) to an Android-based phone. Unfortunately, the experience wasn't great, and I was unable to move the backup of my WhatsApp conversations from the old to the new phone. I realized, this was because:

a. The format of the chat backups was changed from the MsgStore.bak to msgstore-yyyy-mm-dd.n.db.crypt format, and
b. There was no option to point WhatsApp (on the new phone) to pick up the old backup files, unless it automatically detected it.

To make it convenient for users, and in future to prevent such issues, it would help if the WhatsApp installation provides an option to check if the user installing it wants to restore earlier chats, and allow the user to specify the location and format of the backup files. Auto-detection may not be the only/best way to do this, as is currently implemented.

Keep it simple, and allow backward compatibility!

Anybody listening out there? (Hope so).

If you (reader) like this, do vote for it or put in your comments. May be that'll get us heard.

Disclaimer: This is not an official WhatsApp Enhancement tracker/publisher, but since it was hard to get in touch with the WhatsApp guys, I just put this down by myself. Maybe someone will help to take this to them. Cheers.

WhatsApp Feature Enhancement 01/2015 - Private/Self Group

WhatsApp is simple and effective, and it's group chat feature is probably amongst the most widely used universally.

But, with tens of messages coming through for everyone daily, this can get a bit tedious to cope with. I guess, a better way to go back to these is what's the need of the hour.

Allowing a "Private Group" and/or with self membership
Sounds weird, maybe. But, since WhatsApp doesn't have a way to organize messages which can be easily browse later, I feel such a feature may help.

Here's a scenario:
Say, I receive a message from one of my contacts/groups, which I like, and would like to save - and keep - or even "categorize/organize/mark" it somewhere, where I can go back to it at a later point in time. Note, I do not want to share this with anyone else right away, but bcoz I may keep getting more messages (especially from the group), it becomes hard to go back and find this message again.

So, instead, if I am allowed to create a "private group", with just myself as a member, I should be able to forward this message to this group.

Interestingly, while there wasn't a concept of "private group", on my earlier phone (Nokia E63) I was able to add a contact for myself, and view the chats for this. Sadly, when I moved to a new Android phone, and version 2.12.94, WhatsApp automatically filters my own phone number from the contacts, and thus, i'm no longer able to use this "bug"/feature from the older version!

I see that WhatsApp has just introduced a feature to "mark a conversation as unread", but not sure if that serves the above purpose in entirety.

Anybody listening out there? (Hope so).
If you (reader) like this, do vote for it or put in your comments. May be that'll get us heard.

Disclaimer: This is not an official WhatsApp Enhancement tracker/publisher, but since it was hard to get in touch with the WhatsApp guys, I just put this down by myself. Maybe someone will help to take this to them. Cheers.