Swift and easy navigation is key to a good app experience. That’s especially true for apps like WhatsApp which are used a lot for business communication. However, it looks like WhatsApp might be getting rid of the swipe gestures that make navigation so quick and easy.

This change was spotted in the latest beta for the app by WABInfo (via Android Police). So, you won’t see this change if you’re on the stable version of the app. Also, since we’re talking about the beta version of the app, you’ll want to take this news with a grain of salt. There’s no telling if the company will follow through with it.

WhatsApp might take away the swipe gestures

When you’re using WhatsApp, you’ll see the main navigation tabs at the top of the UI. These are your Communities, Chats, Status, and Calls tabs. If you don’t want to bother with reaching for the top of the UI, you can simply swipe left or right on the UI to go to the tab you want.

However, it seems that WhatsApp doesn’t want that feature around anymore. According to the source, version 2.23.16.17 of the app’s beta doesn’t allow you to swipe through the tabs.

This is unfortunate, but it’s not WhatsApp’s doing. This app uses Android’s Material Design 3 design language. In the Material Design 3 guidelines, it advises against swipeable gestures. So, it appears that WhatsApp needs to get rid of the gestures in order to comply with Material Design 3’s outline.

So, while we don’t know for sure if WhatsApp is going to push this to the stable version, it seems likely. We don’t know when it’s going to land, so if you don’t want to give up the gestures, there’s no telling when you’ll lose them.

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If you want to keep them, then you might want to hold off on updating your app. However, that solution can only last you so long, as you don’t want to go too long without updating the app.



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