WhatsApp will soon let you turn off your 'Last Seen' status for individual contacts

WhatsApp has once again been diligently working away behind the scenes to roll out another new feature. This time it's giving its users the option to tweak the in-app visibility settings of their ‘Last Seen’ status.

Though a relatively minor change in the grand scheme of things, WhatsApp seems intent on enhancing its users' overall privacy settings, giving you the agency to personally tailor them to meet what you need on a contact-to-contact basis across the messaging platform. 

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The news comes courtesy of WhatsApp update specialist, WABetaInfo, and will let users modify their "Last Seen" status from one contact to another. One caveat here is that by hiding your last seen status for individual contacts, you will lose the ability to see their last known status, as well. We'd imagine that this won't be too much of a problem for people if they're set on hiding their own in-app statuses, though.  

WhatsApp’s existing setup is such that you can hide your ‘Last Seen’ status to stop people from seeing when you’re online. However, the current setting doesn’t allow for a very granular approach to who you opt to disable the status for in-app, only allowing “Everyone,” “My Contacts,” and “Nobody.” This can be rather reductive when seeking to handle your contacts individually, each on their own merit and basis.

And while this is good news for privacy-conscious users, WhatsApp has been pretty darn busy in other areas, as well, releasing a slew of updates focused on improving the user experience during daily usage of the messenger. 

From WhatsApp migration between phones to a bout of brand new upgrades on WhatsApp for Android, WhatsApp has the sheer artillery power to push out frequent updates – and it appears to have upped its game considerably this year.

There's no word on when we can expect the 'Last Seen' update to go live, but it's tipped to arrive on the best iPhone devices first, with the best Android phones' version set to follow shortly afterward. Either way, we'll keep you updated when we know more.