WhatsApp is bringing iOS-style chat previews to Android

WhatsApp has long let you turn read receipts off entirely, but if you keep them on, there's no easy way on Android to see what someone sent you without them knowing you've read it. The notification helps, unless you've already swiped it away or have too many messages piling up. iPhone users have had a workaround for a while now, and it looks like Android users will finally get it too.

On iOS, you can long-press a conversation in the chat list to get a pop-up with its most recent messages, and doing so doesn't trigger the blue ticks. The window doesn't scroll, though, so longer messages or lots of them can't be fully previewed. On Android, long-pressing a chat currently just selects it and shows the top bar with pin, archive, mute, and delete options.

However, a teardown of WhatsApp for Android beta 2.26.44.12 has now revealed code for the same kind of chat previews like on iOS. Long-pressing a conversation will bring up a floating card with the latest messages in the thread, plus a refreshed context menu underneath it.

WhatsApp's chat previews on Android

Peeking at a conversation this way doesn't send read receipts. And unlike on iOS, you can scroll up inside the preview window to see older messages, without triggering read receipts for any of them either.

The feature is still in development and isn't available even to public beta testers yet. As usual, there's no word on when it will reach the stable version of the app, and features found in teardowns don't always make it to release. Hopefully this one does, since it would bring the Android app in line with the iOS one, from this point of view at least.