Our passion is to find new ways to help keep your messages private and secure. Today, we’re announcing Chat Lock on WhatsApp, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security. 

Locking a chat takes that thread out of your inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device’s password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications, too. 

We believe this feature will be great for people who share their phones from time to time with a family member, or in moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra-special chat arrives.

You can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your password or biometric.

Over the next few months, we’re going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locks for companion devices and creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from your phone’s.

We’re rolling out Chat Lock on people globally on WhatsApp beginning today.