WhatsApp is making it easier for community owners to transfer ownership

WhatsApp is testing new features all the time. Some of these features are made available to a very limited number of users, while others are still being worked on and we can only report that they might be coming soon.

The following new feature seems to be almost ready for primetime. The folks at WABetaInfo report that WhatsApp is already rolling out a transfer ownership feature for communities to some users who have enrolled in the beta program.

What this new feature does is make it easier for community owners to transfer ownership of that community to another member. Also, the previous community owner will retain their admin status, only their responsibilities and primary administrative privileges are transferred in the process.

Screenshots of the feature captured by WABetaInfo reveal how it works and users can find it in the beta version of the app. One other thing worth mentioning is that the original owner of a community who transfers their privileges to another member while retaining their admin status, can still be demoted or removed from the community by another admin.

WhatsApp’s new transfer ownership feature | Screenshots credits: WABetaInfo

Currently, WhatsApp users who act as community owners can’t transfer their full administrative privileges to other members of that community, so they must create a new one and ask members of the community to join it after they leave the old one.It’s a pretty weird situation that WhatsApp hopes to address with this feature. For now, this is only available for beta testers on Android devices. If you’re enrolled in the beta program, you should be looking for WhatsApp beta for Android 2.24.19.34, which supposedly adds this new feature.

As per the cited report, this only appeared for a limited number of beta testers, but WhatsApp is expected to expand the availability of this particular feature. Here is hoping that it will be released to everyone sooner rather than later.