WhatsApp Begins Rolling Out a Hot New Group Chat Admin Feature

WhatsApp is beginning to roll out a new feature that will give group chat admins more control over who joins those groups.

WhatsApp is one of the go-to apps and services for people who want to be able to chat with others as part of a group, and part of that is the ability to have an admin in charge of what’s going on. Now, WhatsApp is rolling out a change that gives those admins new powers.

WABetaInfo, the people who know more about WhatsApp than probably the people at its parent company Meta, report that the admins are starting to see the option to force new group chat arrivals to be approved.

The new approval system requires new group members to have an admin approve their arrival before they can participate in the group chat. If that approval isn’t given, those who have been rejected can’t be part of that group.

Admins have the option of enabling the feature on a per-group basis, so it doesn’t have to be enabled for all group chats just to enable it on one. A new option for “Pending participants” will also become available for each group chat where the feature is enabled, allowing admins to see everyone who has asked for access and then choose whether to approve or deny that request.

The new group chat approval option is starting to roll out right now, both to those who are on the latest beta as well as those who have the latest version of WhatsApp downloaded from the App store.

“The ability to let group admins decide how new participants can join a group by using an admin approval system is available for some beta testers that install the latest version of WhatsApp beta for iOS from the TestFlight app, and it is rolling out to even more people over the coming days,” WABetaInfo says. “Note that this option may also be available for some users that install the latest WhatsApp for iOS 23.3.77 update from the App Store as it is currently rolling out to people on the stable release of the app.”

If you aren’t yet seeing the new feature, WABetaInfo appears to suggest that you will do soon enough.