WhatsApp is developing a centralized contacts hub that consolidates online status information in one place. The feature, spotted in the latest iOS beta by WABetaInfo, will display which contacts are currently online or were recently active—eliminating the need to open individual conversations to check status.

Currently, users with online status enabled must navigate to each chat to see whether someone is available. The new hub will organize contacts into three sections: favorites at the top, followed by currently online contacts, then those who were recently active. The feature will live in Settings and maintain existing privacy controls.

The feature preserves WhatsApp's reciprocal privacy model: users can only view others' online activity if they also make their own status visible. While references exist in the beta, the feature isn't yet available to testers, and WhatsApp hasn't provided a release timeline given its notoriously slow rollout schedule.

For users who rely on online status to gauge responsiveness, this consolidated view represents a significant usability improvement over the current process of checking conversations individually.