WhatsApp unveils new feature just like iMessage – here’s how to use it

You know your friend mentioned the address of the restaurant you’re meeting at on WhatsApp the other week.

But by the time you’ve scrolled through the hundreds of WhatsApp messages, memes and voice notes you’ve sent your friend since Monday to find it, you’ll already be about two hours late for that brunch date.

Well, now you can just stick a virtual pin in all these messages to save yourself from doing a marathon scrolling session.

WhatsApp, the message service used by more than two billion people, has added the ability to pin a message to the top of both individual and group chats for up to 30 days.

‘Now everyone can stay on top of a chat by keeping the important messages up top,’ the Meta-owned company said on X yesterday.

This feature, long a staple of Facebook Messenger and Apple’s iMessage, has been rolled out on Android, and iPhone as well as Web and Desktop versions of the app.

Meta says the feature is simple enough to use – just long-press on a message and tap ‘pin’.

Seven days is the default, but users can also set it to stick to the top of the chat for 24 hours or up to 30 days in a similar feature to ‘starring’ a message.

Any type of message can be pinned, whether it be a picture, video or poll.

However, Apple users, who have long shamed Android phone owners for that dreaded green text bubble, have to do a little more leg work to pin messages.

If you have an iPhone, you just have to hold down the message and select ‘More options’ instead. Web and Desktop users can just right-click and hit ‘pin message’.

Group chat admins can also enable or disable users from being able to pin messages – they can even pin messages only they can see.

When a message is pinned in a group chat, a system message is broadcast to all members.

But it’s tough luck for group chat members who join one after a message is pinned, who lose or clear their chat history or who delete the message before it is pinned – you won’t be able to see the pinned message.

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