Soon after introducing the feature through Communities, WhatsApp is now bringing polls to group chats as well. The feature has been in testing for ages and now it’s finally available on the stable version of WhatsApp. The update has already been rolled out around the globe.
Polls should make decision-making easier in groups through votes. Now you can have your friends or family decide on a place to go or what food to eat through group polls. To use the feature, simply head over to a group chat and tap on the attachments button (paperclip button) inside the text box. Select the options for “Poll”
You can ask any question in your poll and have up to 12 options to vote for, but it’s not like any of us is going to use more than 4 or 5 options. The hamburger button next to the voting options lets you move them up and down.
Unlike Telegram, WhatsApp does not have anonymous voting, at least for now. This means that all votes are visible to everyone, so it will not be like picking your next president.
Since this feature comes from WhatsApp Communities, other updates from Communities will also become available soon. This includes more admin controls, such as being able to delete unwanted messages from a group, sharing larger files, voice and video chats with up to 32 people, and groups for up to 1024 members, all with end-to-end encryption.
Some of these are available on WhatsApp already, but other features are expected to roll out soon.
In related news, WhatsApp is also working on the ability to message yourself, like some other apps including Telegram and Discord. This should make it easier to share files between different devices or save something for later. This is only available in WhatsApp Beta and it is unclear when it will roll out to the stable version.
The poll feature is great but for now we can vote for every available option which needs fixing.