WhatsApp will soon let you hide your ‘Last seen’ status from specific contacts

The ‘My Contacts Except...’ feature to exclude specific people from seeing online status is currently in development. — Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

WhatsApp is currently testing a feature that allows users to hide their Last Seen status from specific contacts.

The name of the feature has been identified as ‘My Contacts Except...’, according to a report by WABetaInfo, an independent portal that provides updates about WhatsApp.

The report stated that the feature may be available to beta testers on the Privacy settings page.

The current available options for ‘Last Seen’ status updates are ‘Everyone’, ‘My Contacts’ and ‘Nobody’.

WABetaInfo explains that some users may select ‘Nobody’ if they want to hide their status from certain contacts.

However, selecting this option also means that they won’t be able to view the ‘Last Seen’ status of other users. Giving users the ‘My Contacts Except’ feature means they will have the option to exclude specific contacts from viewing their online status for privacy reasons.

However WABetaInfo added that this feature does not prevent the excluded contact or contacts from seeing the user’s about page or profile photo.

Specific privacy settings is also currently only available for WhatsApp Status, where there are three options to choose from namely ‘My Contacts’, ‘My Contacts Except...’ and ‘Only Share With...’ for users to decide who can see their status updates.

Last week, WhatsApp announced a new feature called Communities where people will be able to compile separate groups under one topic. Communities also come with tools for admins to remove problematic messages from chats. It also supports voice calls for up to 32 people.