World’s widely installed and used application WhatsApp is getting a new feature that allows you to send texts, videos, and pictures to anyone whose number isn’t saved in your contacts list. Until now, WhatsApp only allowed sending messages to numbers saved as a contact on your smartphone and the latest update is a welcome addition to the widely used instant Messaging app.
The “Click to Chat” feature as WhatsApp calls it, will let you chat with anyone whose phone number you haven’t saved in your contacts list. The App will create a link that will let users chat through them in individual threads. However, WhatsApp still needs you to have the phone number of the person you want to text to and the recipient should also have WhatsApp installed on their smartphone.
In order to use this feature, users will need to create the “Click to Chat” link by using ‘https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=’ followed by the phone number of the person you want to send messages to. Users must keep in mind that this number should be devoid of any special character but should include international format without the prefixed zero.
For example, users should type ‘https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=911234567890’ and NOT ‘https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=+91-1234567890’.
The above-mentioned link can be entered into any Browser on a user’s smartphone soon after which the browser will prompt if it could open WhatsApp. Upon allowing it to, WhatsApp will open and create a conversation thread where you can talk to the person you wished. The feature also works on your computer as you’d have to follow the same set of procedures to connect your WhatsApp Web account to the new chat that needs to be created.
Users must note that the new feature only works to open individual threads and wouldn’t work if you want to create a group chat this way. There’s also a way to create a new thread with a pre-crafted message from your side. If you wished to say “Hey there”, your link will be something like ‘https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=9820098200&text=Hey there’.
With the latest addition, WhatsApp has thus made it easy to converse or send a text to a person whose number you wouldn’t want to be saved in your address book in the long run. The latest feature would also help businesses to communicate with their customers without needing to clutter their contacts list.