WhatsApp will now let you create groups without naming them, says Mark Zuckerberg

WhatsApp update: Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg today announced a new feature that will soon be available on WhatsApp. This new feature will enable users to create new groups without having to name them. “Making it simpler to start WhatsApp groups by naming them based on who’s in the chat when you don’t feel like coming up with another name,” he wrote in a post on Facebook. As of now, when WhatsApp users create a group, they need to add a name for their groups once they have selected the participants. While adding a profile image and description for the group is optional, adding the group name is imperative. WhatsApp’s new feature fixes this by giving users more freedom while creating new group.

That said, this new feature does come with some caveats. WhatsApp says that the unnamed groups can house only up to six participants. This means that groups that have more than six participants will need to be named when they are getting created. The company also said that the unnamed groups will be dynamically named based on the names of the participants is in the group. This means that the group admin will have no control over the dynamic name that WhatsApp selects for the group. However, group admins will be able to add a name for the group that they have created at any point after creating it.

Furthermore, WhatsApp said that the group name will display differently for each participant and that it will be based on how they have contacts saved in their phone. This is the same logic that WhatsApp uses while displaying names of participants in a group chat. For understanding, if you have saved your mum’s WhatsApp number as ‘Mom’ on your phone, you will see all her name displayed as Mom in the unnamed group, while others will see the name that they have saved on their devices. To put it simply, everyone will see the name of the contact as they have saved on their devices when seeing the dynamic name of the unnamed group. And if you are added into a group with people who do not have your contact saved, your phone number will appear within the group name.

As far as availability is concerned, WhatsApp says that it is rolling out this feature on Android, iOS and the Web to its users globally over the next few weeks.