New WhatsApp rules for 'all' users being rolled out within weeks

WhatsApp has explained three major changes coming to everyone in weeks. WhatsApp, which is run by Facebook parent company Meta, introduced 32-people-strong voice chats late last year and will be expanded the participant number to video calls.

Now 32 people can hop on a video call. WhatsApp has also introduced new speaker spotlight feature, which lets callers see who's talking by automatically highlighting whoever is speaking, and bumping them to the forefront of the screen.

The app will also introduce screen sharing for audio. "As more and more people have relied on our products to make calls over the years, we’ve been working on new ways to ensure all calls have a solid audio quality," Meta said.

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Google Meet has similar limits, allowing for 100 participants for Standard/Essentials Starter/Essentials accounts, 150 participants for Business Standard/Enterprise Essentials accounts, and 250 participants for Teaching and Learning Upgrade accounts (admit it, you didn't know Google has this many different account types).

Apple's Facetime allows up to 32 people on video calls. Zoom allows 100 participants in video calls for Basic and Pro accounts (this does go up to 300 for Business and 500 for Enterprise accounts).

All of these features are promised to roll out "over the next few weeks" to all WhatsApp users. Additionally, the service says it remains "relentlessly focused on audio and video quality, for clearer calls no matter where you are".

It highlighted the recent launch of its MLow audio codec which should improve call reliability and quality, no matter how good (or bad) your connection is. This makes calls on mobile devices benefit from better noise and echo cancellation, while it also gives video calls higher resolution for those on fast connections.

Audio should be crisper, it goes on to say in a blog post alongside the changes, detailing each.