WhatsApp is rolling out a collection of new features aimed at making group conversations easier to manage, introducing long-requested tools including an “@all” mention, more flexible polls and a quicker way to create subgroup chats.
The update focuses exclusively on WhatsApp groups, reflecting the messaging platform’s continued effort to make large conversations more practical for families, communities and workplace teams. While many of the new capabilities have existed for years on collaboration platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Discord, their arrival on WhatsApp brings them to one of the world’s most widely used messaging apps.
The headline addition is support for “@all” mentions, allowing users to notify every member of a group with a single message. The feature is intended for announcements or time-sensitive updates and will trigger notifications even for members who have muted the conversation. To prevent excessive alerts in larger communities, WhatsApp says only group administrators can use “@all” in groups with more than 32 participants. Users who prefer fewer interruptions can also choose to disable notifications generated by these mentions.
Group polls are also receiving a significant upgrade. Users can now assign a closing time to polls, making them more useful for planning events or collecting decisions within a fixed deadline. WhatsApp has also added the option to hide voters’ identities, enabling anonymous responses for questions where privacy may encourage more honest participation.
Another quality-of-life improvement allows poll creators to edit questions for up to 15 minutes after publishing them. The change addresses a common frustration with accidental mistakes or poorly worded questions that previously required creating an entirely new poll.
The update also streamlines the process of creating smaller conversations from existing groups. Rather than manually selecting members to build a new chat, users can now generate a subgroup directly from an existing conversation. The feature is designed for coordinating specific activities, organising events or discussing topics relevant to only part of a larger community, reducing the need to repeatedly assemble the same participant lists.
Collectively, the additions signal WhatsApp’s continued evolution beyond a simple messaging service. As more workplaces, schools and social groups rely on the platform for day-to-day communication, features traditionally associated with collaboration software are increasingly finding their way into the app.
Meta has gradually expanded WhatsApp’s productivity tools over the past few years, introducing Communities, larger group sizes, improved file sharing and collaborative features that position the platform as more than just a personal messaging app. The latest update continues that trend by giving users better control over notifications, decision-making and group organisation without fundamentally changing the familiar WhatsApp experience.
The new group chat features are rolling out gradually, so availability may vary depending on platform and region as the update reaches users worldwide.
