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WhatsApp now lets you create groups without naming them beforehand. The Meta-owned messaging app gives these groups an auto-generated name based on the saved contact names of their participants. Each participant will see a different name for the group depending on what they have named other participants on their phone.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new WhatsApp feature through his official Facebook page. “Making it simpler to start WhatsApp groups by naming them based on who’s in the chat when you don’t feel like coming up with another name,” he said. Zuckerberg also broadcasted the news via his Instagram channel.
A screenshot shared with the post shows a group named “Rocco & Li-Chen,” with both being the saved contact names of its participants. Likewise, if you add contacts saved as “Mom,” “Dad,” and “Brother” to a group, the group will be automatically named “Mom, Dad & Brother.” However, “Mom,” “Dad,” and “Brother” will each see a name unique to the other. For unsaved contacts, the phone number will appear in the name.
Of course, you can always change the group’s name after creating it. Depending on the settings, other participants may also be able to edit the group’s name. But this feature can come in handy if you want to quickly share a message with a group of friends or when you need to create a temporary group for sharing vacation photos. Just add the participants and you’re done. Don’t bother naming the group.
That said, WhatsApp only lets you create name-less groups with a maximum of six participants, including you. If you have selected more participants (up to 1,024 allowed), you must name it. As a workaround, you can add more participants later after initially picking five or fewer. It’s unclear whether the feature was supposed to work this way or if it’s a bug, but we could add many more people to a name-less group after creating it.
WhatsApp is already rolling out the name-less group feature
The new WhatsApp feature is now rolling out to users globally. It should be available to everyone on Android, iOS, and the desktop client over the next few days. Update the app to check if the name-less group feature is already live for you. If available, you will see that names are optional for groups with six or fewer members. You can click the button below to download the latest version of WhatsApp from the Google Play Store.