It appears that Meta wants to make WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging app, more than just your go-to chatting app. The way it has been adding new features to WhatsApp lately, it’s more or less turning into a social media platform. Sometimes, the app sees changes that some people find unnecessary—take the Channels feature, for example.
That said, the app now gets a new search-by-date feature, which appears pretty useful. It was previously spotted testing on the beta versions of the app and is now available for all users. Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief of Meta, shared a video on his WhatsApp channel, demonstrating the new feature. Here’s the video showcasing the search-by-date option in action.
What Is the Search By Date Feature?
Want to recall your past conversations with someone? Searching for an image you shared with your friend on his birthday? Or are you looking for that document you sent to your colleague last month? If WhatsApp is your go-to messaging app, you might be in similar situations where you must revisit chats from a past date. Until now, the only viable method has been to scroll through the chats until you find what you’re looking for. Or search for words you remember texting during that time.
WhatsApp’s new feature changes this. It proves handy in similar scenarios, allowing you to search for past conversations by choosing a specific date.
How Do You Find WhatsApp Chats From a Specific Date?
Before proceeding, check if you are on WhatsApp’s latest version. Since this is a recently added feature, it won’t be available in the older versions since this is a recently added feature. Once done, follow these steps:
- Open your WhatsApp chat with the person to find previous conversations. Then, tap the vertical three-dot menu button at the top right corner.
- From there, tap on the Search option.
- The search options will appear at the top. Next, tap the calendar button to the right.
- A calendar menu will then appear on your screen. Choose any date from here, and then hit OK.
By doing so, WhatsApp will take you to the chats from the selected date. If there happen to be no conversations from that particular day, the app will show conversations from the nearest previous date when you engaged in texting.
The WhatsApp Engineers Show No Signs of Stopping
Recently, we reported on some other WhatsApp features in development, with the option to set usernames being the most exciting. Unfortunately, there is some bad news as well: WhatsApp backups on Google Drive are now included in your storage quota. Google offers just 15GB of free storage, applicable to all its services, including Drive, Photos, Docs, and Gmail.
Additionally, WABetaInfo reported that WhatsApp has started testing cross-messaging support to comply with the new EU rules. Soon, you could send messages to other supported platforms directly from WhatsApp.
