filters – Tech Magazine xi39 news

Image Credits: WhatsApp

For those who use WhatsApp more like an inbox, the app will now become more useful. WhatsApp on Tuesday announced a handful of new chat filters for the app to access certain types of messages easily: All, Unread and Groups.

The “All” filter is selected by default and shows you an unfiltered version of your inbox. The “Unread” filter is helpful in looking at messages you might not have seen. It also helps you get to inbox zero and get rid of the annoying number of unread chat indicators.

Notably, WhatsApp already had a way to look at unread messages through a filter in the search bar. But with the new filter bubbles on top of the chat screen, the option is easily available.

Meta said that the “Groups” filter was one of the most sought-after features for quickly scrolling through all your group chats. This filter will also show conversations in subgroups that are part of Communities — WhatsApp’s discussion group feature.

Gmail users might find these filter bubbles familiar as the Google-owned email service introduced a similar feature in 2020 to make search simpler.

This first set of filters might be just the beginning, though. As multiple reports from WABetaInfo have suggested, WhatsApp has been working on other filters such as “Contacts” to filter out messages from unknown people and businesses, “Favorites” to mark frequently used contacts and even custom chat filters in various beta versions of the app.

WhatsApp said that the filter options will be rolling out to users starting today and will be available to all users in a few weeks.

Image Credits: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto / Getty Images

Threads and Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced today that Threads is launching a new feature that lets users filter out words and phrases from their feeds and mentions. The “Hidden Words” feature automatically mutes common words, phrases, and emojis that might be offensive to users. In addition to these preset filters, users can add their own custom words and phrases in the settings. Users can turn these settings off at any point in time.

Earlier this week, dating app Hinge launched its own “Hidden Words” feature (yes, with the same name) to block requests with comments that contain unwanted words.

Threads Hidden words — **Image Credits:** Threads

Threads said that the feature will filter out content from both the “Following” and “For You” feeds, search results, profiles, and replies to posts.

Controls for quoting posts

The Meta-owned social network already allows users to control who can reply to their posts: anyone, profiles you follow, or mentioned people only. Threads also has the option to restrict who can mention you in their posts, replies, and bio: everyone, profiles you follow, or no one.

Now the company is planning to introduce similar controls for quote posts. Threads said that it will soon let you limit who can quote your posts. Additionally, users will be able to manually unquote their posts as well.

The company’s rationale behind these new controls for quote posts is that it wants to restrict unwanted interactions.

“Since quoting a post is one of the most visible ways to connect with someone on Threads, it was important for us to give people more agency over who can engage with them and help reduce unwanted interactions,” a company spokesperson said.

Separately, Threads is also testing a way to mute notifications for interactions with posts. While some of these features aren’t available just yet, the company is still shipping new features at a rapid pace as it has started testing a way for people to archive posts automatically.