In January, WhatsApp introduced itsnew privacy policythrough a pop-up to its users. The changed policy, which aims to create leeway for better business communication and data exchange between Facebook apps, drew a lot of criticism.
After delaying the rollout a few times, the policy willfinally come into effect on May 15. If you choose not to accept it, WhatsApp will slowly take away core functionalities such as accessing the chat list.
If you’re someone who’s moving on toSignal, Telegram,Session, or any other app, you need to tell your friends about that. While you may be able to message some of them individually, it might be hard to do it for all people on your contact list.
That’s whereWatomaticcomes in. It’s an open-sourced Android app that automatically responds to your WhatsApp messages with a custom text indicating that you’ve switched to another app.
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Here’s how it works: once you install the app on your Android phone and give it notification access, it’ll reply to all messages you receive with a pre-defined text. You can change this text to whatever you want. Plus, you can choose to exclude group chats from getting overwhelmed with these responses.
Currently, this app works with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. So, it’s handy if you’re leaving the Facebook camp in favor of another chat app. You also have an option to limit automatic responses to one message per contact.
There are a few other autoresponders on the block, but they ask for far too many permissions on your phone that could implicate your privacy. Watomatic just asks to access your notifications. sPlus, you can choose to exclude group chats to prevent recipients from getting overwhelmed with these responses.
For the upcoming versions, the makers of the app want to work on support for more apps, and the ability to exclude certain contacts and groups from getting auto-responses.
You can check out the source code of Watomatichereand find download links for Play Store, F-Droid Store, and Izzy Droid storehere.
Story byIvan Mehta
Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.“Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.”
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