WhatsApp will let you set up group chats without having to come up with a name

WhatsApp will soon let users create new group chats without having to name them, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced. Unnamed groups will instead be given an auto-generated name based on their participants. In a screenshot shared by Zuckerberg, we can see one such group titled “Rocco & Li-Chen.”

Although it’s a minor feature, not having to name each and every group chat should be helpful for those times when you’re sending group messages for one-off events. I’m personally in a dozen or so WhatsApp groups that are just titled “Drinks?” which were set up for a one-off event and were never intended to be an ongoing group chat. Being able to see a list of participants in the chat list rather than a nondescript group chat title feels like an improvement to me.

According to TechCrunch, unnamed groups will be limited to six participants, rather than the thousand-plus that can normally join a WhatsApp group. The app will use the names you’ve saved individual contacts as to generate a group name, which means that group names will appear differently for their different participants (so if you have a contact saved as “Mom,” then you’ll see “Mom” in the group chat name).