• by Colin Kirkland , May 5, 2023

To help increase engagement and comprehension on WhatsApp, parent company Meta is adding new chat features to the messaging service, including single-vote polls and sharing options for images and captions.

Single-vote polls will allow poll creators to restrict the amount of responses each chat participant can provide to a poll question. Poll creators can now turn off “allow multiple answers” when aiming for more clarity in their answers on group chats.

Users can now search for polls in their chats as well. In a highly active chat, polls can often get lost, but now users can filter messages by polls, just like they can for photos, videos and links. On the “Chats” screen, users can press “Search” and then “Polls” to find a list of results.

Notifications linked to poll responses will also become available as part of the update.

In terms of sharing options, WhatsApp is making it possible to keep, delete, or completely rewrite a caption when forwarding photos and videos to a friend. This update is addressing the fact that users may not have the time to add context before someone responds to what they forwarded.

And finally, users will be able to share documents -- like a newspaper article or work document -- with captions, in order to provide more information to the receiver.

WhatsApp says these updates have started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming week