New Advanced Search & Backup Security is Coming to WhatsApp

The newest version of WhatsApp Beta landed on the Google Play Store a few days ago and it includes major features for the popular chatting app.

Folks over at Technews have spotted two new features in WhatsApp Beta version 2.20.117 called Protect Backup and Advanced Search. Through Advanced Search, users will be able to search for specific content including texts, audio files, videos, pictures, links, documents, and more.

The feature is still under development.

The Protect Backup feature, on the other hand, is more of a security update. This feature will let users secure their encrypted Google Drive backups with a password.

These passwords will not be saved within WhatsApp or Facebook servers, so forgetting the password will mean losing the backup as well.

There are also new auto-download rules coming to WhatsApp soon to enhance convenience. Auto downloading can be disabled in WhatsApp already but a future update will disable these by default for messages that have been forwarded frequently. This feature will be customizable through the settings.

It is unclear when these features will roll out to the live version but we will update this space as soon as it does.