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Delhi Delhi. WhatsApp is borrowing yet another feature from Instagram to make its app even more appealing. The Meta-owned chat app is now reportedly working on a feature that will allow users to mention contacts in their status posts. Mentioned users will receive a notification and have the option to re-post the status as their own, according to a report that claims the feature is still in development.

WABetaInfo, which keeps track of WhatsApp's upcoming features, has reported that the ability to mention users in Status will include a dedicated button. It will be available within the caption field when users are trying to add a photo or video to the Status. While users will be able to mention contacts before sharing the Status, they may not be able to make changes once the Status is posted. The Status post will immediately alert the mentioned user, who can start a chat by replying to the Status.

However, these mentions will be private, which means no one other than the people mentioned can see them. While WhatsApp already offers two privacy levels for status updates, the upcoming feature for mentioning users will make it convenient for users to let only the relevant people see the status. “This ensures that the conversation between the user and the mentioned contact remains private, as the mention is not visible to anyone else who views the status,” the report says. This also means that mentioned users will always get a notification for status updates irrespective of the sender's privacy setting. However, the mentioned users cannot see other status updates due to the specific privacy setting.

The report says that the new mention feature is now available to some beta testers as part of the latest WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.24.203.3, which is available for download from the Google Play Store. WhatsApp has not said when it will roll out the feature, but users can expect it to be available in an upcoming update for the stable channel.