The expanded group chat member limit comes alongside a slew of updates and new features being added to the messaging app this year. — Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash
After adding the option for “Call Links” – invite links for joining in-app calls – as a feature late last month, WhatsApp has now raised the maximum number of members allowed in a group chat to 1,024, as reported by leaker site WABetaInfo.
This is not the first time this year that WhatsApp has increased the cap on group chat members. Back in May, the limit was set to 512 members after having been capped to 256 since 2016.
Increasing the total number of users allowed in a group is likely a move to enhance the recently added Communities feature, which allows for multiple groups to all be added under a single Community umbrella.
With each Community allowing for up to 21 groups (the WhatsApp FAQ page says up to 50, which is not the case in our testing), the new group cap should allow room for up to 20,480 members for the first 20 groups, with an extra 5,000 from the announcement group. In contrast, the prior 512 limit would have only allowed for 10,240 members for the first 20 groups and the extra 5,000 from the announcement group.
The expanded group chat member limit comes alongside a slew of updates and new features being added to the messaging app this year, including emoji reactions, the ability to hide the “Last Seen” status for specific contacts, extra features for group voice calls, and an updated native Windows client.
