WhatsApp could soon finally fix an irritating pinned chat limitation

WhatsApp is already one of the world's most popular instant messaging apps and parent company Meta continues to make steady improvements to the list of features that the app has to offer across a wide range of platforms. Now we're hearing that one of the improvements still being developed is the ability to pin more than three different chats for the first time.

The news comes via the WhatsApp beta watchers over at WABetaInfo and sure enough, it's the latest Android beta version of the WhatsApp app that has given us our first look at the feature in action.

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The feature is currently live in the WhatsApp 2.24.6.13 beta release that's available for download by beta testers via the Google Play Store and the ability to pin more than three chats is working currently. There's a screenshot showing the feature above and the screenshot does suggest that there is still a limit with five being the maximum number of chats that can be pinned in this version.

It's important to remember that this is just a beta release and that things could change before this feature rolls out to everyone who uses the final, shipping version of WhatsApp on Android and other platforms. It's also possible that WhatsApp could choose not to launch the feature at all, although that seems unlikely. The company is normally pretty good at taking features through the beta process and shipping them to the masses but it's still impossible to know what kind of timeframe the company might be working to.

This year could be a big one for WhatsApp beyond this new software update. The instant messaging company's parent outfit, Meta, has already shared details about its plans to allow for interoperability with other apps and services as part of the EU's Digital Markets Act requirements. While there appears to be nothing on the horizon currently, the DMA could require that WhatsApp and other messaging platforms allow themselves to access third-party messages and vice-versa. The prospect of being able to read WhatsApp messages in the Messages app on an iPhone isn't too far-fetched, eventually, although Apple's iMessage has so far been able to avoid falling foul of the DMA. That also means that it's unlikely we will see iMessages appear in third-party apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram, too.

Apple does have some messaging changes afoot, however. It confirmed previously that it will begin supporting the RCS messaging protocol alter this year, likely as part of the iOS 18 software update.