WhatsApp video calls now have backgrounds and filters

WhatsApp is catching up with Google Meet and Zoom.

On Tuesday, the company announced that it added backgrounds and filters to video calls. The filters on offer include options such as warm, cool, black and white, dreamy, and fisheye. You can also choose from backgrounds such as living room, office, beach, forest, and sunset. If none of these quite work for you, there’s also the option to just blur your background and hide the horrendous mess that is behind you.

Finally, the Touch Up and Low Light options are there to make your video calls “more vibrant and enjoyable.”

Based on WhatsApp’s examples, the filters and backgrounds on offer seem fine, but are not as fun as the stuff you get on Google Meet, for example.

The popular messenger’s video call feature has long been adequate, but far behind on features when compared to other video calling apps. In particular, the ability to blur the mess that is my living room has been a very important feature for me on Meet; now that WhatsApp has it as well, I’d be more inclined to take a business call through Meta’s messaging app.

Excited to try out the new filters, I updated and fired up the WhatsApp app on my iPhone, but the filters and backgrounds, which should be available via a new icon that appears in the upper right corner during a video call, were not available. WhatsApp says the effects will be available to everyone “in the coming weeks.”