WhatsApp's new search bar makes another appearance

WhatsApp is among the most popular messaging apps, with developers constantly rolling out new and upcoming features through the beta channel.

The app introduced one such feature a couple of weeks ago, a search bar for the Chats tab, helping users search for a specific message from a long list of conversations.

While the new search bar was added with WhatsApp beta version 2.24.7.1, it hasn’t yet made its wider appearance for all users. But that’s changing now, with devices showing a prominent search bar in the Chats tab.

Users managed to spot this under-development search bar in WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.24.6.77, which first debuted in early March. This makes it clear that the search bar is being tested across multiple app versions, indicating that it’s here to stay.

 

An early version of the search bar (left); The newly spotted search bar in WhatsApp beta (right)

A side-by-side comparison with the search bar that first appeared in version 2.24.7.1 of WhatsApp beta reveals that the new implementation still needs some work. The fact that a portion of the search bar is absorbed by the dark green header tells us that it’s not fully optimized just yet.