WhatsApp Unveils Personalized Chat Themes for Android Users: A New Era of Customization

WhatsApp is enhancing its functionality by introducing chat-specific theming support for Android users. Although theming options have previously existed, they were generally confined to altering the chat background wallpaper. Recently, a new interface enabling users to set specific themes for individual chats has been discovered, mirroring features available in Facebook's Messenger app. Messenger has offered such customization for quite some time, which begs the question of why WhatsApp took until now to implement it. At this moment, the newly designed theming features are only accessible in the beta version of WhatsApp for Android. A recent post indicated that several screenshots have been circulated, showcasing a significantly different interface for theme selection compared to the one currently used on Android devices.

Once WhatsApp rolls out an update, users can choose from a variety of 20 chat colors and up to 22 textured themes. Each theme will come with its own preset colors for chat bubbles, differentiating between the sender and recipient, thus introducing a new dimension of personalization within conversations. Unlike the existing options, these new themes will be specific to each chat, allowing users to assign a particular theme for every individual chat, similar to the way wallpapers can currently be adjusted.

This feature was also observed in the beta version of WhatsApp for iOS. While both app versions maintain similar functionalities, there’s a possibility that this feature may debut in the iOS release before it appears on Android, given its prior introduction on that platform. In a related development, Google's Gemini virtual assistant on Android is set to gain the ability to send messages through voice commands. This function is already available via Google Assistant, which is being gradually succeeded by Gemini. Much like the chat-specific theming, the integration of Gemini is still being tested.