Sneaking a look at a message without telling the sender is something WhatsApp on Android has never really supported. Code in recent beta builds points to a fix: hold your finger on a chat in the list and a small card pops up above a fresh menu, showing the newest messages in that conversation.
Nothing has shipped. Testers on the public beta cannot switch it on, WhatsApp has said nothing officially, and no date exists. Teardown finds like this sometimes never reach users.
The idea is borrowed from the iPhone, where a long press has opened a message window for years without marking anything read. That window is fixed in size, so longer threads get cut off. Android today does less: a long press selects the chat and puts pin, archive, mute and delete in the top bar. The Android card is reported to go one better by letting you scroll back through older messages, again with no read receipts.
The first report came from WABetaInfo, which spotted the preview in Android beta 2.26.44.11 and described the new menu: select, mark as read, pin, archive and delete, with a More options entry that adds locking the chat, adding it to a list, viewing the contact and putting a chat shortcut on the home screen.
A later teardown of beta 2.26.44.12 found that switching the unfinished feature on allows reading with no read receipts sent back, which is the point of it.
The two reports list slightly different menu items, which fits a feature that is still being changed. One build shows a mark-as-read action, while other lists mark-as-unread, so expect the final menu to differ.
For people who keep read receipts on, this would close a gap. Today the choices are to turn receipts off for everyone, or to read the notification before it is cleared. A peek that leaves no trace would be a small privacy aid, though it also means a sender cannot tell whether you have seen a message you chose only to peek at. Opening the chat in the normal way still sends the blue ticks.
WhatsApp has given no timeline, so for now it stays a beta find.
The beta tracker adds that the read receipt is only sent when the chat is opened the normal way, and says the preview is meant for moments when you cannot reply straight away but want to know what was said. Earlier betas already put small photo, video and sticker thumbnails in the chat list, and the preview card continues that work on the list screen.
