WhatsApp updated the video calling experience across all devices on Thursday, introducing screen sharing with audio support and a new speaker projection feature. It also increases the limit for video call participants to up to 32 people.
In August last year, WhatsApp introduced screen sharing support for video calls. The instant messaging app has now enhanced this experience by enabling support for audio sharing alongside your screen. This will allow you to watch videos with your contacts in a WhatsApp call.
The other major update WhatsApp has made to its video calling is the expanded limit, which allows users to have up to 32 people in a single video call across devices. Before this update, WhatsApp had a limit of 32 participants on mobile devices, while users on Windows and macOS could add up to 16 and 8 participants, respectively.
WhatsApp’s expanded video calling support across devices aligns with Apple’s FaceTime, which also allows iPhone and iPad users can have up to 32 participants in video calls. However, Google Meet and Zoom allow users to do so holds up to 100 people even when they are in basic level.
The latest batch of updates to WhatsApp also brings speaker spotlight to automatically highlight the participant speaking in a video call and make them appear first on the screen.
In addition, the parent Meta of WhatsApp was introduced the Meta Low Bitrate (MLow) codec in WhatsApp to improve call reliability, even if the user has poor network connectivity or is using an older device. It comes as a major upgrade to the open source Opus codec, which Meta previously deployed in its real-time communication products. The proprietary codec is rated to provide twice the audio quality of Opus, even while maintaining 10% lower computational complexity than the open source codec.
MLlow is already available on Instagram and Messenger calls and is now rolling out to WhatsApp to improve the calling experience across all Meta platforms.
Alongside MLow, WhatsApp said in a blog post that it will roll out all the latest calling-related updates to all eligible users in the coming weeks.
