Since WhatsApp being the most popular messaging application in the world, Facebook owned company always come up with new and advanced feature all the time. Many changes were introduced in the last year such as Group Calls, WhatsApp status, Picture-in-Picture video playback, WhatsApp Stickers etc.
This year also whatsapp is introducing new features. One of the upcoming features is the fingerprint authentication for android. Since it is a security based feature, it has that much importance for the privacy. The fingerprint authentication feature is already available for the IOS users.
Android users have to wait a few more days or weeks to get this feature available on their mobile. The feature is now available on the beta version of the WhatsApp with version 2.19.83 and above.
Read: How to View WhatsApp Status of Others Without Letting them Know
Even Though the feature is available in the version 2.19.83, it will not be available to all the users. The feature is currently hidden by default and will be activated for the selected users only. So as per the WABetaInfo, the feature is in the testing phase and expected to roll out to the public user gradually once it is stable.
The new fingerprint authentication feature will help user to lock screen their whatsapp account using the default fingerprint that is registered with the device. Currently, users need to use third party locking application to lock application including WhatsApp.
With the new feature, users will not have to rely on other application to lock their WhatsApp account. Unless, they can use the builtin lock feature. The fingerprint feature can be enabled from Setting > Account > Privacy > Use Fingerprint to Unlock. Once it is enabled, WhatsApp will register your fingerprint and will ask for the lock options, ie if you what the application to be locked immediately (once you leave the application), after 1 minute, after 10 minutes, after 39 minutes etc.
Read: WhatsApp to Ban Third Party App Users Soon
Once the feature was enabled completely, WhatsApp will show a sign indicating that user need to unlock their WhatsApp using the fingerprint and also error message will show once the authentication is failed.
As we mentioned before, the feature will not be available to all even if you have the beta version of the application. The public stable version will be available soon.
