WhatsApp is slowly transforming your casual chats into productive conversations. The most recent update, which is already available on iOS (and still in beta testing on Android), adds reminders to your messages.
The blog 9to5Mac reported that the feature is looking to boost productivity inside the chats, which, is right where most of the plans begin.
You can set a reminder for minutes or up to a full day, and you’ll get notifications exactly when you need them. This makes WhatsApp a light agenda living inside your conversations. iDownloadBlog, another blog specialized in iOS, agrees that the idea behind this feature is that instead of hoping you remember to follow up with something that was said in a conversation, you put a timing to the exact line that matters, right in that moment.
Keeping context and action together, which is often what gets lost when you have to copy details on a notebook apart, your computer calendar, or another app.
For people with a lot appointments, errands, or replies, that small change brings a calmer chat experience less mistakes. And because it’s already inside the app people use all day, it becomes a way to you reduce the tasks throughout the day.
The setup is quite easy and very useful for day-to-day life. You will have to mark the message and define right there the moment you want the alert to arrive. That’s it. The reminder will show up at the time you set it. There are preset timing options like “one hour” or “24 hours,” or you can just personalize it for the exact time you need.
By joining the message to the reminder, the information stays together, and it gives a more natural path to the daily activities: confirm a date, check on information later that day, and answer something to someone the next day.
It doesn’t completely replace an agenda, no, but it helps balance the charge of it, especially with those little “to do” things that we forget because they were said in the middle of a whole conversation.
How to activate the reminders, step by step
Some setting up follows naturally the already used “everyday actions”:
First, long-press the message in which you want to put a reminder. Then, choose “remain” in the menu that shows up. The window times for the reminder will come up, and this is where you define when you want to receive the reminder (from 1 minute to 24 hours). And finally, confirm the notification.
Is similar to when you want to send a message forward or answer an exact text, so the learning to do is not much. According to the blogs, this feature is available mostly on the 25.25.74 WhatsApp version for iOS. And on Androids, it is still testing because the availability changes depending on the users or regions.
For now, the experience remains light with rapid options and ways to personalize it without getting out of the app.
A lighter agenda inside your chats
The global launch has not been officially happened yet, and for the moment it prioritizes iPhones. Android users will have to wait a bit more. But even so, the test face is already giving away a clear direction: WhatsApp is looking into becoming a space to communicate and organize.
The goal is simplicity and efficiency (in my opinion), it helps too keep productivity in the same place where many activities and ideas begin: on the chat.
And although it’s not trying to replace a real agenda or organizations’ apps, it helps with one of the most common daily mistakes, the “I forgot,” because it slipped through a mountain of messages.