WhatsApp’s AI-powered Quick Chat Recap is coming soon to save you from notification overload

You know the drill; you open WhatsApp, stare at 47 unread chats, sigh, and get on with reading the barrage of texts. But WhatsApp is now rolling out a smarter way to catch up on your conversations, without actually reading every single message. Enter – Quick Chat Recap.

Currently being rolled out on Android (version 2.25.21.12) for beta testers, the feature taps into Meta AI to whip up concise summaries of your unread chats. But this isn’t just another blanket notification digest. This is WhatsApp’s new AI flex; one that gives you a curated overview of up to five selected chats at a time. The idea? Help you sift through the chaos and get to what actually matters.

Select, summarise, skip the scroll

Here’s how it works. From the three-dot menu in your Chats tab, you’ll soon spot an option called “Quick Recap”. Tap it, pick your chats, and boom! You get a tight summary of the conversation without diving into the message rabbit hole.

And for the privacy hawks, WhatsApp says the summaries are generated using a feature called Private Processing. In short, your messages aren’t being shipped off to some mysterious data farm. The AI runs locally, with a secure buffer between your chats and Meta’s central servers.

ALSO READ: WhatsApp brings AI to help summarise the chats you missed

This isn’t WhatsApp’s first AI feature. Summaries for messages have existed before. But this version is more targeted, more selective, and frankly, more useful. Instead of passively summarising everything unread, Quick Recap puts you in the driver’s seat. You choose the chats; it does the skimming.

It’s a small but thoughtful tool in an app that increasingly feels like a digital battleground of work pings, family forwards, and ‘good morning’ messages.