WhatsApp remains one of the most widely-used messaging utilities in the world and one of the most popular even within the Meta stable. But that doesn’t mean that it’s been smooth sailing. Luckily, the latest bug to undermine WhatsApps usability and cause many a user much frustration is about to be a thing of the past.
The bug in question caused two major issues across Android devices running the Beta test version of the popular messaging app; it resulted in users’ messages being duplicated on the receiving end, and it brought about frequent and unexpected crashes to the entire Whatsapp mobile facility. The bug had users in quite a state. The idea that messages were possibly being duplicated between the sender’s device and that of the receiver was a lot to stomach. Especially at the tail end of mass privacy concerns last year, leading many to leave the familiar green-themed pastures for other messaging utilities like Signal and the now embattled Telegram.
Fortunately, as detailed by WhatsApp itself, the messages were automatically being duplicated on the receiver’s device, and the bug had nothing to do with data encryption issues. Rest assured, users’ conversations are subject to automatic end-to-end encryption, meaning external of the two communicating devices, the data shows up as unintelligible strings of characters. The new update prohibits automatic duplication and therefore fixes this issue.
The second issue, where users’ WhatsApp utilities would unexpectedly crash, is also addressed by the new update. It’s pertinent to mention again that these issues mostly affected users in the Android beta testing program for WhatsApp and that users of the stable version were largely unaffected. WhatsApp has made efforts to remind users that such issues are likely to occur during beta testing, as that is the point of the beta program.
Users take knowingly sign up to test software that is still in the testing phase of development in order to provide feedback and commentary to the developers so that solutions and fixes can be implemented before the stable version hits the Play Store. The update is aimed at users running Android 11, but will work on any version higher than Android 4.1.
WhatsApp remains an integral part of communication in the 21st century for large parts of the population and has increased its relevance in the current climate even more with innovations like WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Business. To find out how WhatsApp could revolutionize commerce in the coming years, read our article on how one young developer used WhatsApp to create a marketplace dedicated to India’s local Kirana stores.
