KakaoTalk Adds 'Quiet Chat Room' Feature... Managing Inactive Chat Rooms

On the 2nd, Kakao introduced the 'Quiet Chat Room' feature in the KakaoTalk update (v10.3.0) through KakaoTalk Labs.

The 'Quiet Chat Room' is a chat room archive feature that allows users to store and hide '1:1 chat rooms and group chat rooms that are inactive even without leaving.' Hidden chat rooms have notifications turned off and are not included in the badge count of the KakaoTalk app.

Users who update to the latest version of KakaoTalk can activate the 'Quiet Chat Room' feature in KakaoTalk Labs. By long-pressing or swiping a chat room and selecting 'Archive,' the chat room moves to the archive. The chat room archive is displayed at the top of the chat tab, and chat rooms within the archive automatically have notifications turned off.

Messages received in 'Archived Chat Rooms' are shown in gray numbers in the archive, and the message count is not included in the overall KakaoTalk badge count. It is expected to reduce stress for users who experienced inconvenience from additional badge counts while on vacation with KakaoTalk notifications turned off, or who had difficulties due to message notifications accumulating in inactive chat rooms.

With this update, the 'Quietly Leave Chat Room' feature has been officially incorporated. 'Quietly Leave' attracted significant attention, with about 2 million users activating it during the three weeks after its introduction in Labs last May. Kakao reviewed stability and other factors for about three months and officially included it in this update.

The 'Quiet Chat Room' and 'Quietly Leave Chat Room' features are part of the 'Kakao Easy' project, which focuses on reducing users' conversation stress and burden and improving convenience in daily life. Kakao plans to continuously add new features to reduce user stress and improve existing functions.

Yang Ju-il, head of KakaoTalk at Kakao, said, "We are adding and improving new features reflecting user feedback arising from the increase in the volume of conversations and diversity of relationships," and added, "We will continue to humbly accept users' voices and reflect various improvements to provide better services."

Meanwhile, Kakao continues to introduce various improvements reflecting user feedback with the goal of 'making communication between people and between people and technology closer and safer.'

Notable updates include 'Accept/Reject Unknown Friend Group Chat Invitations,' which confirms acceptance when a user not on the friend list is invited to a group chat, improved usability of 'Scheduled Messages' by removing the scheduled message display, and the 'Talk Siren' feature for user safety. Additionally, the 'KakaoTalk Manual' page, opened in April, introduces various KakaoTalk features and how to set them up.