WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world, used by over 1.2 billion people worldwide and 200 million in India alone. Despite its success, the Facebook-owned company has not become complacent and always keeps the competition on its toes by releasing new features every few weeks. 2017, of course, saw the overhauled WhatsApp Status (an aping of Snapchat), but there have been many other small updates this year that didn't get as much attention.

 From increased media sharing limit to video streaming, we take a look at all the new WhatsApp features released this year alone. While going down this memory lane, we’ve ranked features in the order that we feel made the most impact (or will make, if in beta) in user experience.

1. Delete for Everyone

WhatsApp in October made the Delete for Everyone feature live for all users, the biggest change to chats on the platform since the blue ticks were introduced. As the name suggests, this feature allows a sender to delete messages they had already sent, in individual chats as well as group chats. Text messages, images, videos, files etc. can be recalled using this feature, which is found when you delete a message and selecting the Delete for Everyone option. The message on the sender as well as recipient's sides will be replaced with "This message was deleted." However, a third-party app with access to notifications can retrieve sent messages that have been deleted.

2. New revamped Snapchat-like Status feature

Perhaps, one of the most important updates this year, the new Status feature was rolled out to all users globally in February. The new WhatsApp Status feature replaced the old text form of status to allow users to change their status to a short video or multiple photos that will automatically disappear in 24 hours. Even though this feature was clearly introduced to combat Snapchat competition, it overhauled the way users interacted on the app daily. It became available for WhatsApp Web users in August.

3. Media sharing limit increased to 30

This change is significant because WhatsApp is one of the primary platforms for media sharing after an event, get-together, or any social meeting where pictures and videos are taken. The media limit was first at 10, and this increase to 30 was a welcome change by all users. It was first spotted in Android beta in January, but was later rolled out on all platforms eventually.

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