At WhatsApp, our work shapes the way more than 2 billion people worldwide communicate every day. We take this role seriously, and we focus on the details to get it right for our users. We aim to create an app that not only works seamlessly, but also feels like a natural extension of your phone — allowing you to focus on the conversations that matter in your daily life. We believe success is achieved when our design enhances how people communicate on WhatsApp and empowers them to connect in new ways.

Our design philosophy builds on our product principles of keeping WhatsApp simple, reliable and private. We filter these through a design lens to build intuitive and clear flows that work universally and help people connect, while protecting their privacy. We pay close attention to how people use their devices and design our user interface to complement their existing experience, so WhatsApp feels familiar and easy to navigate. If you know how to use your device, using WhatsApp should be easy.

I believe the way we approach change on WhatsApp is powerful, and it puts people at the heart of everything we do. When designing, we consider varying levels of connectivity and digital literacy to keep WhatsApp accessible, and we’re careful with changes that affect people’s muscle memory. This helps us be more intentional about the problems we solve for and minimize product disruption.

Over the years, we have primarily focused on adding utility to the app. As the product continued to grow in functionality, the design needed to evolve as well. We wanted the product to feel more fresh and modern without disrupting its core functionality.

We’re introducing a new, consistent green palette within the app for a unified experience. We considered over 35 different color iterations, ultimately aligning with WhatsApp’s iconic green and opting for a palette that allows for harmonious color pairings throughout the app. We also increased the usage of neutral colors, enabling us to be more selective about where and how the green is used.

Icons help add visual cues to quickly guide people through the desired action or information, so it’s important that they are intuitive and recognizable. We’re updating our icons to a rounded, outlined style and, to match the new iconography, we also refreshed our illustrations and added animation for a more playful aesthetic.

We’ve added a more modern, native bottom navigation bar on Android to help people find what they need faster. Placing tabs closer to people’s thumbs offers more natural navigation and matches the current experience on Android devices.

One common request we’ve received is for better organizational tools for messages. Recently, we introduced chat filters that help you focus on and find important conversations faster. Moving the navigation bar on Android to the bottom allowed us to design filters to be at the top of the chats list, so people can quickly find the right conversations without scrolling through their full inbox. Now, you can select between unread and group filters with just a tap to catch up on missed messages or your favorite group chats.

These updates represent a huge effort from a multidisciplinary team of designers and we’re excited for everyone to try them out. We’re always inspired by how people use WhatsApp for so many aspects of their daily lives and will continue to design technology that helps them stay connected. Whether it’s chatting with family, collaborating on projects, interacting with businesses, or completing tasks with Meta AI, we’re focused on bringing new features and making improvements that help them do more. We’ll keep sharing our learnings with the design community!