WhatsApp is making it a lot easier to avoid the awkwardness of having to publicly leave a group chat.

The company announced a range of new features aimed at protecting users' privacy via a blog post on August 9.  

One of the updates lets users leave WhatsApp group chats without notifying other members. Post-update, instead of alerting the full group when a member leaves, only admins will be notified.

Users will also be able to choose who can see when they're online.

The new update will let users select who can and can't see when they're online, allowing people to check WhatsApp without their friends and family knowing when they're active on the app. 

WhatsApp says both these features will be rolled out to all users within the month. 

The blog post also included a screenshot blocking update for "View Once" messages. The feature, introduced last year, already lets users send messages and media that disappear after being viewed.

The company is now testing a feature that will allow users to block people from screenshotting these temporary messages, although there is currently no set timeline for when this feature will be rolled out to users.

Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a statement shared on Facebook that the new updates were part of an attempt to build "new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations." 

As of 2021, WhatsApp had more than 2 billion users, according to the statistics website Think Impact.

The social media app has been a part of Meta since 2014 when the company acquired it for $19 billion, Insider reported.