WhatsApp has a new feature in the works in its latest attempts to offer consumer-focused features and to compete with the likes of Telegram. For one, Channels is one of the features that makes WhatsApp lag a bit behind Telegram, and now, Android Police reports the company is working on catching up.

WhatsApp working on making Channels easily discoverable

WABetaInfo has now unearthed a feature that's currently under development for WhatsApp. It was spotted in WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.23.12.4. Once this feature is released, you will be able to search for a channel by name, and you will also be able to filter results alphabetically, by popularity, or based on recency.

This feature is still under development though, which means that it may not even be visible to all beta testers. All in all, it seems that Channels are now getting closer to a release.


Based on previous rumors and discovered info in beta, channels would work similarly to a WhatsApp broadcast. The feature will have safeguards built to protect the identities of members of a channel. For example, nobody will be able to see which channels you're subscribed to. Also, subscribers won't be able to see the phone number of the channel owner.

It's possible the Channels feature will be positioned within the Status tab (which could get renamed to Updates). Channels most likely won't be end-to-end encrypted. However, they would operate separately from private or group chats, so channels probably won't affect the current encryption protocols of WhatsApp.