WhatsApp is seen testing support for rich media previews for URLs shared by users in WhatsApp status. This will let viewers have a basic idea of the link shared before they proceed to access the URL.

This was spotted in the WhatsApp iOS client and has not come to the beta channel even. So it’s still a long way from public testing before coming to the general public. To date, users can see only the URL when it’s in status mode and should access it to know it completely.

Rich Media Preview of WhatsApp Status URLs

In the last couple of months, we see WhatsApp rolling out some essential features to the community – including the increased media sharing limit, group participants, emojis reactions to messages, etc.

While other services like the Communities, filtering chats, etc., are in the pipeline, adding to these is a new rich media preview support for URLs shared in WhatsApp status. This was spotted by WaBetaInfo in WhatsApp for the iOS client.

Although it’s not available in the beta channel yet, so we beta testers may have to wait a little longer to experience this. But as per the screenshots shared by WaBetaInfo, we see the feature showing a range of data like the image of the target website, the title, a meta description, and the URL.

All these can be seen after tapping on the URL shared, and another tap will redirect you to the targeted website. To date, we can only see the raw URL string in any status update shared by our contacts.

Since this won’t convey much information, users may not be informed enough to be interacting with the URL. But a rich media preview showing enough details may trigger the viewer to decide better on his potential actions with the shared URL.

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