WhatsApp for Android adds text based status update and PiP support in the latest update

WhatsApp has released a new update for its Android IM app with two new features. The update brings features from beta branch over to stable version of the app.

The new update brings text based Status and Picture-in-Picture support to the app. WhatsApp beta users may already know this, but in case you don’t here’s how they work. The Picture-in-Picture functionality takes advantage of the native picture-in-picture mode integration present in the latest major iteration of Google’s operating system, allowing you to simultaneously have a call with someone while you continue using the app in the background.

Until now users were only able to set pictures as their Story status, but with the new update, they can now use text as their Status like in the screenshot above.The Status also supports links and will display a nice preview similar to link preview in chat messages. You can further read about it here.

Here’s the official changelog

Now you can post text-only updates to your status and they’ll be visible for 24 hours. Just tap the pencil icon in the Status tab, type what you’d like, and pick a background color or font of your choice.

When in a video call, you can tap back to continue the video call in picture-in-picture mode (Android 8.0+).

It’s worth mentioning that to use Picture-in-Picture video calling, you must have Android Oreo running on your Android device .The update is for the stable version of the app and is rolling out to everyone. You can download the app from below or from this mirror.