If you’ve sent links in certain messaging apps, you know that sometimes a preview of that link will pop up, like a thumbnail of the website or the video that you’re trying to share. This gives users a better idea of what kind of link they are clicking, especially if said link is of the shortened variety which sometimes doesn’t tell us much.
That being said if this is a feature that you would like to see come to WhatsApp, you’re in luck. According to the folks at Android Police, they have discovered that in WhatsApp 2.12.312 for Android will now start showing rich previews for shared URLs, which you can see in the screenshot above as an example.
Typing a link will also generate a small preview of what to expect, although at the moment it seems that the feature only works on the person who is sending it, meaning that whoever you’re sending it to will not see the preview even if they’re running 2.12.312. It also appears that it will only work with normal messages and not image links.
That being said, this is a beta version of the app so we guess there are still some issues that need ironing out. In the meantime if you’d like to like to check out the beta, you can head on over to WhatsApp’s website for the details.