WhatsApp’s new green dots show you contacts who are online

Meta is bringing its classic activity indicator over to WhatsApp. Borrowing a visual design cue long used by its sister platforms, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp is actively testing a green dot indicator to signify when a contact is currently online.

Discovered by feature tracker WABetaInfo, the visual update is steadily rolling out to select beta testers across both Android and iOS devices.

1. Where Does the Green Dot Appear?

Unlike Instagram, where active statuses line up across the top of your main inbox, WhatsApp is keeping the feature slightly more subtle during this initial test phase:

• The Contact Info Screen: For now, the small green circle will only appear on the bottom-right corner of a contact’s profile photo after you tap into their specific “Chat Info” or profile menu.
• Replacing Text: The green dot is engineered to replace the legacy, text-based “online” label that historically sits right under a contact’s name, providing a cleaner look at a glance.
• Real-Time Tracking: The indicator lights up dynamically the second a user opens the application and automatically disappears the moment they log off or switch apps.

2. Privacy Protections Remain Untouched

For users worried about an intrusive shift toward forced visibility, the feature strictly adheres to your pre-existing safety preferences:

The Privacy Rule: The green dot honors whatever boundaries you have set up in your standard Last Seen & Online privacy settings.

If you have configured your status to “Nobody” or restricted specific contacts from seeing your activity, the green dot will not appear on your profile picture. Furthermore, just like the legacy system, opting to hide your own online status means you will simultaneously lose the ability to see the green dot active indicators on any of your contacts’ profiles.

3. What’s Next for the Interface?

While the indicator is currently buried inside individual contact profile pages, internal system strings suggest Meta is building toward a more centralized design.

The company is developing a dedicated “Contacts Hub” where users will eventually be able to view a consolidated list of recently active or online friends sorted by name or status. Following successful diagnostics in the beta channel, the green dot is expected to make its way to the stable, public version of the application in a future update.