New WhatsApp update can help you hide your embarrassing photos from strangers

If you’ve ever sent a selfie on a busy train and noticed some eagle-eyed passengers photobombing you, you’ll know how embarrassing it can be to have the contents of your phone on public display.

Or, worse, when you go to send a picture on WhatsApp and your personal image gallery suddenly appears in full view to anyone around you.

Luckily, an experimental new WhatsApp feature is now available which replaces the old horizontal media bar with a gallery button.

Instead of accidentally swiping up on the camera and showing off all your recent pics, they can now be hidden by default.

According to WABetaInfo, the new feature is available on the WhatsApp beta programme.

They said: “The changes are already available to beta testers today, and more tweaks for the WhatsApp camera are coming with the next updates.

“In our opinion, we prefer the horizontal media bar since it allowed us to quickly select what we wanted to share, but now we need to do one more tap.”

There are a ton of other new features available on the WhatsApp beta, including a change to the time period in which you can unsend messages, giving you plenty of chances to delete embarrassing drunk messages to your ex before they see them.

How to join the WhatsApp beta

To sign up, follow these steps:

1. Open WhatsApp and tap the three dots, then head to ‘More Options’
2. Tap Linked Devices
3. Hit ‘Multi-device beta’
4. Tap ‘Join beta’

The WhatsApp beta is where the app developers test new and experimental features for the messaging app before releasing them to the general public.

If you join the beta programme, you’ll get to try out nifty new features on a weekly basis, such as message reactions, a new app layout, cryptocurrency payments, and even voice note previews.