WhatsApp introduced the Username feature in June. It hasn’t been fully rolled out yet, but users can already reserve their usernames. WhatsApp introduced usernames with a focus on privacy, allowing its users to communicate without knowing each other’s phone numbers. Building on that, WhatsApp is now testing a feature that grants users granular control over their phone number visibility.
This revelation comes from WABetaInfo, which discovered the development in beta version 2.26.45.1 of WhatsApp for Android. The publication reports that WhatsApp’s new privacy feature for phone numbers has four options: Everyone, My contacts, My contacts except…, and Nobody. These options let users decide who can see their phone numbers in calls and chats.
However, this feature will only be available to users with a username. And if someone already knows your phone number, they will continue to see it in calls and chats.
Under the current setup, WhatsApp automatically hides your phone number from those who contact you via your username. With the new feature, the default visibility option will be “Nobody,” so users who want their number hidden won’t have to do anything. But if you want people to see your phone number for business or other purposes, you can change that visibility.
This new phone number privacy feature is still under development. It is not available even to beta users, so we can only wait for WhatsApp to release it on the beta channel, followed by a public release.