WhatsApp video calls get support for 32 participants, screen sharing with audio, more

WhatsApp update: Meta has rolled out a major update to WhatsApp. This update brings a host of improvements to WhatsApp’s video calling feature. The company, via a blog post announced that it is bring an updated screen sharing feature to the video calls.

For the unversed, WhatsApp rolled out screen sharing support to video calls in August last year. However, at the time, users could not share the audio. For instance, if a user played a video while sharing their screens during a video call, other members in the call could only see the video without any audio. That is changing now.

The company has announced that now WhatsApp users can also share their audio while sharing their screens during a video call. “Screen sharing with audio: Ideal for watching videos together, now when you share your screen, you can share your audio too,” the company wrote in a blog post.

WhatsApp update: Speaker Spotlight

Another feature coming to WhatsApp video calls is called ‘Speaker Spotlight’. This feature automatically highlights the speaker who is talking at the moment on the screen. It also shows the speaker who is talking first on the screen making the conversations smoother.

WhatsApp’s biggest update: 32 Participant support

That said, the biggest update of the lot is support for 32 participants in a video call across devices and platforms. As TechCrunch notes, earlier WhatsApp had a 32-participant limit only on its mobile devices. This means the feature was available only to iPhone and Android phone users. For WhatsApp’s Windows desktop app users, this limit was set to 16, while for the macOS desktop app users this limit is set to eight participants. Now, a WhatsApp video call can have up to 32 participants irrespective of the device that they are using.

“Now you can have up to 32 people on a video call across all your devices,” the company added.

Lastly, the company said it has made improvements to the overall audio and video quality by adding support for  MLow codec. “Calls made on mobile devices benefit from improved noise and echo cancellation, making it easier to have calls in noisy environments, and video calls have higher resolution for those with faster connections,” WhatsApp wrote.