WhatsApp's upcoming features let you link accounts and keep archived chats muted

From group calls and suspicious link detection to picture-in-picture (PiP) videos, WhatsApp has seen a slew of new features this year. Even as we near the end of 2018, WhatsApp-focused website WABetaInfo unearthed two new features we could see soon: Linked Accounts and Vacation Mode.

As the name suggests, Linked Accounts reportedly lets you link your WhatsApp account with other services. Even though Linked Accounts looks to be mainly developed for WhatsApp Business, references about the feature were also found in the standard app.

Interestingly, WABetaInfo also alleged that you should be able to use your WhatsApp account to recover your Facebook account. This means that you could use Linked Accounts as a way to recover accounts or automatically share updates to other services.

Unsurprisingly, the first service to support Linked Accounts looks to be Instagram. Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, so there is an incentive to maintain some sort of ecosystem between the three services.

The second new feature is Vacation Mode. Even though you can archive chats, WhatsApp automatically unarchives them once you receive a new message. Vacation Mode lets you keep archived chats the way they are, even when you receive new messages. So long as you muted those chats, you will not get notifications of any new messages in those chats.

Vacation Mode can be found in the Notifications menu inside of the app’s Settings. Interestingly, Vacation Mode is based on the new Silent Mode feature. Silent Mode prevents WhatsApp from displaying a badge when you receive a message from muted chats and groups. The feature is on by default, so you will have to go into Settings to disable it if you do not want it.

Silent Mode should be rolling out to Android users. We do not know when Linked Accounts and Vacation Mode will debut, but they should pop up sooner than later.