WhatsApp Now Streams Videos Before They Finish Downloading

WhatsApp is shipping a bunch features via its beta app recently and the latest feature makes the popular messaging app able to play videos while they are finished downloading.

Downloading videos you receive over WhatsApp to watch may have been a pain for you but not now. WhatsApp has added a new feature into the app that should make watching videos on the app much convenient. That’s “playing the videos” before they complete downloading.

Just hit the play button on the video message you receive, it will start buffering and playing. No download finishing time is there to wait for.

You should also note that the media download configurable options are still there to facilitate. If you have set WhatsApp to automatically download media when it’s received, like before, the received video will automatically be downloaded and when you see the message/video in WhatsApp, you will see download meter at bottom-left corner of the media. Otherwise a download icon will be present on at the corner which you can tap on to start downloading.

However in both cases you will now have a big Play button in the middle which will instantly start playing the video whether it’s automatically download already or it has to be downloaded now. In latter case video will continue to stream/buffer and play and you could see as the time scrubber being highlighted while the video is buffering.

To get your hands on with the feature you must join the WhatsApp beta testers team and updated WhatsApp to latest beta version from Play Store.