Whatsapp announces Chat Lock to make the conversations more intimate and private

Mark Zuckerberg announced a new WhatsApp feature called Chat Lock. This feature lets you protect your most intimate conversations with a password, secures them in a separate folder, and when someone messages you and you have that chat locked, the sender’s name and the content of the message will also be hidden.

Our passion is to find new ways to help keep your messages private and secure. We’re excited to bring to you a new feature we’re calling Chat Lock, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security. 

Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications too. 

This feature will be great for people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives. You can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your phone password or biometric.

"Over the next few months we’re going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices, creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from your phone’s", the company stated in the press note