Apple Industry News

Meta is adding new options to WhatsApp’s status feature to let you personalize the About section of your profile with disappearing settings.

WABetaInfo spotted this feature under development in the most recent version of WhatsApp Beta for Android. It’s currently available to some beta testers, but will expand to more users over the coming weeks.

You’ll be able to set an expiration timer for the About section on your profiles. WhatsApp will clear your status after a chosen duration. In addition, your WhatsApp status will now also appear at the top of your chats alongside the last seen info.

WhatsApp status is getting disappearing options

WhatsApp currently doesn’t provide any disappearing options for the status feature. So, for example, if you set your status to “I’m at the gym” or some such but forget to clear it, anyone visiting your profile will see this outdated status. The ability to choose how long people can see your status will solve this problem.

You can choose from preset timers, ranging from as short as 30 minutes up to 1 day, as well as set a custom timer up to one month. A vanishing status is visible within conversations and on the profile page to anyone permitted by your privacy settings.

“When a user shares a particular status that appears in the conversation header, it can also help others understand whether it’s a good time to reach out or not, based on the message conveyed by the status,” the site notes. Your vanishing status and the last seen information will alternate in the chat header.

Before, you could only change privacy options for your WhatsApp statuses in Settings > Privacy > About. Also, whatever it is that you shared via your status remained visible on your profile permanently if you forgot to update your status later. The expiration timer will give you much more flexibility when sharing your mood, current activity, phrase or other information with contacts via the status feature.

You will also see the expiration time in the WhatsApp settings and see how long your status will remain active. All expired statuses are automatically saved in the status history within the WhatsApp settings, so you can revisit them later.

More features coming to WhatsApp

Meta has also been working on guest chats for messaging without the app or even an account. This feature is part of Meta’s compliance with the European Union’s interoperability requirements that will let EU WhatsApp users chat with people using other messaging apps and protocols, including Google Messages, Apple iMessage, Telegram, Signal and others.

You will also be able to schedule reminders for a specific message to receive a push notification so you don’t forget about important follow-up replies. Other upcoming WhatsApp capabilities being tested include threaded message replies for more structured conversations, especially in busy group chats, switching between two different WhatsApp accounts without using WhatsApp Business for a second account, using WhatsApp with a username to avoid revealing your actual mobile phone number, and more.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/08/07/meta-testing-disappearing-whatsapp-status/

When Netflix inevitably increases its subscription prices again, wherever will you go? Apparently, it won’t be Hulu…

A report shared on Wednesday by Variety reveals Disney’s upcoming plans to phase out the standalone Hulu streaming app and integrate its content and features into the company’s first-party Disney+ app instead.

Disney completed its acquisition of the Hulu streaming service on June 9^th, 2025.

Regarding the plans to discontinue the standalone Hulu app, Disney‘s CEO Bob Iger and CFO High Johnston jointly said the following:

Today we are announcing a major step forward in strengthening our streaming offering by fully integrating Hulu into Disney+. This will create an impressive package of entertainment, pairing the highest-caliber brands and franchises, great general entertainment, family programming, news and industry-leading live sports content in a single app.

By creating a truly differentiated streaming offering, we will be providing subscribers tremendous choice, convenience, quality, and enhanced personalization. This will enhance our ability to continue to grow profitability and margins in our entertainment streaming business through expected higher engagement, lower churn, and advertising revenue potential, as well as operational efficiencies that over time may result in savings that we can reinvest back into the business.

Work is already underway to continue enhancing our technology, and over the coming months, we will be implementing numerous improvements within the Disney+ app, including exciting new features and a more personalized homepage.

Disney hopes that by integrating content and features into a single app, they will be able to offer more value to Disney+ users and synergize streaming. The result is that subscribers may pay less than they would have if subscribing to two separate services while Disney gets to capitalize on the profitability of new subscriptions and lower churn – the act of customers cancelling their subscriptions rather than continuing them.

Sadly for consumers, the decision limits choice. If you had wanted content originally found only on Hulu, but aren’t interested in anything on Disney+, you may now be forced to pay more to subscribe just for the Hulu content, even if you don’t watch any Disney+ content. On the other hand, if you like content from both platforms, this could save you some money.

The exact ways that Disney plans to adjust pricing to accommodate for the additional content, if at all, remains to be seen.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/08/06/disney-phasing-out-hulu-streaming-app/