WhatsApp Rolls Out 'Restricted Chats' to Beta Testers, Locking Conversations to the Primary Phone

By Hamza Faisal

WhatsApp is testing a new per-conversation privacy option called Restricted Chat, and its sharpest feature is aimed squarely at the devices you never intended to share a chat with. Once switched on, a restricted conversation stops appearing on every linked device and stays locked to the user's primary phone.

The feature is rolling out to a limited group of beta testers. WABetaInfo reports the option appearing in the Android beta build 2.26.39.11 and in an iOS TestFlight build, with the rollout beginning in early October. The toggle lives in the chat info screen and is off by default, so users have to switch it on chat by chat.

Enabling Restricted Chat applies four restrictions to that conversation for everyone in it. Media received in the chat no longer saves automatically to the device gallery. The option to export the conversation's history is disabled. Meta AI features stop working inside the chat. And the conversation becomes unavailable on all linked devices, including WhatsApp Web, desktop apps, tablets, and secondary phones.

The restrictions apply to every participant, not just the person who toggled them. As soon as the setting is enabled, WhatsApp shows a system message in the conversation confirming that messages can now only be sent and received on the primary device. For now the feature works only in one-to-one conversations, not in group chats.

The linked-device block is the restriction that separates Restricted Chat from WhatsApp's earlier privacy tools. Under the older Advanced Chat Privacy setting, a protected conversation remained fully available on linked devices. Restricted Chat closes that gap.

According to WABetaInfo, that closure is the point. Unofficial WhatsApp clients and third-party AI agents almost always get into conversations by registering themselves as a linked device, and a chat that cannot sync to any linked surface cuts off that route entirely. That protection holds even if someone in the chat has already connected an unofficial tool to their account, and it works alongside end-to-end encryption, which WhatsApp says is unaffected whether the feature is on or off.

The framing builds on concerns WhatsApp has voiced before. Security outlets reported earlier in September that the company had flagged modified web clients that can read conversations and forward them to AI systems without the user's knowledge. Restricted Chat is the first WhatsApp control to address that path directly at the chat level.

Restricted Chat also arrives with a new name for an old idea. WhatsApp is replacing the Advanced Chat Privacy label with the Restricted Chat name, partly because the earlier wording left some users assuming their conversations were less protected without it. The new branding makes clear that the setting is an optional layer of control rather than a precondition for encryption.

There is no timeline yet for a wider or stable release, and the usual caveats apply: features in beta can change or stall before they reach the public build. But the direction is clear enough. As AI agents and unofficial clients learn to ride along on linked devices, WhatsApp is starting to treat the linked device itself as a privacy boundary, one chat at a time.

By Hamza Faisal