As usual, thanks to the beta version of WhatsApp a new feature currently in development (on Android) has emerged: the introduction of a dedicated section for the birthday notifications for your contacts. The feature will allow users to view directly within the app when a friend’s or family member’s birthday is approaching, facilitating the immediate sending of greetings.
WhatsApp will introduce birthday reminders: the feature spotted in the latest beta
The operation of the new tool is extremely practical and relies on integration with the smartphone’s address book. Unlike the data collected by WhatsApp for regulatory and age-verification purposes, which remain private and not visible to other users, the new birthday section will draw exclusively from the information stored locally on the user’s device.
So WhatsApp will show a reminder only for those contacts for whom the birth date has already been stored in the phone’s address book tab. Consequently, the effectiveness of this feature will directly depend on how carefully the user manages their personal contacts: the more complete the agenda, the more useful the new section will be.
From a privacy perspective, control remains entirely in the user’s hands. Since the app reads data from the local address book, it wasn’t necessary to introduce new settings: the decision to save or not save a person’s birthday remains an individual choice tied to managing one’s own phone.
Thinking about it, this is a highly sensible choice: by now most people already use WhatsApp as a channel to send birthday wishes, so the new feature makes sense (serving as a reminder).
This novelty was spotted in the Android beta of WhatsApp (2.26.27.3), but has not yet been officially released to testers. Consequently, expect a wait before the new feature appears in the app’s stable version.
