The option to add up to 512 members to groups was a new feature that was made available to beta testers in June. With the help of this function, users could now build larger groups than they could before. This week, much to our surprise, WhatsApp decided to support groups of up to 1024 members, increasing the group limit once more.
This functionality is accessible on WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS, as you can see in the screenshot, however it is only available to an unspecified number of beta testers. Simply establish a group or add new members to an existing one in WhatsApp to see if the feature is available for your account. In this area, you can view the limit that has been set for your account. There is nothing wrong with your account if you still see “512” because this is just a little test, similar to what happened in Argentina when the feature that allows sharing media files up to 2GB in size was implemented.
The fact that sub-groups of communities support the same new cap and WhatsApp is also creating new tools to allow admins more control over these larger groups in the future, such as a list of pending participants and an approval mechanism, makes us believe that this is a really important step forward.
This week, the WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS is releasing this capability to a select group of beta testers. As always, when more users are able to expand their groups’ membership to 512 or more, we’ll let you know.
