In an effort to give users an extra layer of privacy and security, WhatsApp has announced a new Chat Lock feature. With WhatsApp’s new Chat Lock feature, you can lock individual chats with a password or fingerprint. This way, you can hide away the most personal conversations without locking the entire app.
Though WhatsApp is known for its end-to-end encryption, but anyone who has your phone may be able to see your messages. If you’re concerned about prying eyes, Chat Lock should make it easier to hand your phone over to someone else.
In this new feature all your locked chats will be moved from your regular inbox to a new folder that only can be accessed with a password or biometric authentication. In addition to protecting users’ most intimate conversations, this new feature will also hide notifications from those chats.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, confirmed the new feature in a Facebook post, stating: “New locked chats in WhatsApp make your conversations more private. They’re hidden in a password protected folder and notifications won’t show sender or message content.”
Chat Lock is rolling out now, and WhatsApp has promised there will be additional upgrades to look forward to in the future. Meta wrote in a blog post “Over the next few months we’re going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices, creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from your phone’s.”
