Ever had someone send you a WhatsApp message, only to follow up a few minutes later with something along the lines of: Hey, I know you’re online, why aren’t you responding?

You should be able to put an end to that fairly soon.

A new WhatsApp beta for Android, version 2.22.16.11, adds the ability to hide your online status, WABetaInfo reported Friday. Online status shows up on top of the window when you open a chat, showing you whether a user is online or, if not, when they were last seen using the app.

Now, users will have the ability to customize both the “last seen” and “online” features to be shown to everyone, all contacts, only selected contacts, or nobody.

We knew the feature was coming thanks to a report from WABetaInfo earlier this month, but at the time, it was under development for iOS, with no clue as to when it may be coming to Android.

Now, however, with the feature showing in a WhatsApp beta, it’s near guaranteed to show up in an official update to the WhatsApp application soon.

Besides hiding the fact that you’ve been (ab)using WhatsApp all day, the feature should be useful if you’re trying to avoid someone bugging you, or to be able to check on something in your chat history without everyone pouncing on you with messages.

Mashable