WhatsApp is creating a new Contacts tab in its app

As observed in early previews of the updated interface, the Contacts addition introduces a brand-new destination directly into the Android app’s primary navigation bar. Unsurprisingly, the tab is designed to centralize a user’s address book, but it incorporates several interactive indicators to enhance day-to-day communication. Among these additions is a real-time online status indicator, represented by a small green dot, which immediately reveals which contacts are currently active within the application. This brings a layer of visibility traditionally associated with desktop chat clients or broader social networking feeds directly into the core messaging experience.

Beyond simple status tracking, the redesigned Contacts list incorporates thoughtful organizational features, including integrated birthday reminders. For individuals celebrating their birthday on a given day, the interface displays a festive cake emoji alongside the text "Birthday today" directly next to the contact’s name. This information is pulled seamlessly and automatically from the user’s local smartphone contacts, bridging the gap between native device address books and the messaging ecosystem. Additionally, the list serves as a direct channel for growth, allowing users to easily invite new people to join WhatsApp, targeting those rare individuals who might not yet have the application installed on their devices.

Navigation and discovery within the new tab are anchored by a prominent search bar positioned at the top of the interface. This search functionality allows users to locate specific individuals swiftly by typing a name, phone number, or unique username. To accommodate different user preferences, the application provides flexible sorting options for the contact directory. Users can choose to sort the list dynamically by recent activity—which automatically prioritizes individuals who are currently online—or revert to a traditional alphabetical arrangement. In alignment with WhatsApp’s long-standing privacy framework, individuals who have manually disabled their "last seen" status indicators will naturally not appear as online within this view, ensuring that user privacy settings are fully respected across the new interface.