WhatsApp’s ever-growing feature set may soon include the option to help others from a distance

Total bummer. And most of us techies have been in this position, be it with parents, grandparents or friends. So having a solid option for an app that supports safe screen sharing is so important, yet somewhat rare.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’ve used a couple over the years, precisely because of this type of scenario. But I never used the technology the app used and I rushed to remove it as soon as I was done.

But now, if — say, WhatsApp — with its status and end-to-end encryption would begin offering such a feature… I’d be interested. And would you look at that? WABetaInfo have uncovered traces of screen sharing in the latest WhatsApp beta version.

Here’s a quick demo of the workflow from WABetaInfo.

The feature is available through version 2.23.11.19 of the texting app for Android. And the gist of it is pretty simple: there is a new button that you can tap while on a video call, after which you’ll be able to share your screen with everyone else on the call.

Users will be able to interrupt the stream at any time too! And by the way, speaking of a new button: the entire in-call button layout seems to have been refreshed, so that it looks more clean and aesthetically pleasing.

That being said, this appears to be only available for newer versions of Android. This is to say that if you are rocking an older version of Android, you won’t be able to share your screen. Vice-versa too: if your recipient is with an old ‘droid, they won’t be able to see a shared screen.

As is usually the case with uncovered features such as this one, we don’t know when it will be available for everyone in the live version. But we sure know that it will be quite useful when it finally arrives!