Get ready to reserve your WhatsApp username soon

WhatsApp's username feature has been in development for roughly two years now. The feature, which would allow users to set a unique username for their account, will prevent the need to share personal information like a phone number while sharing your contact information with a new contact.

We've known for a while that the messaging giant has been silently working on the feature, though there was never a clear timeline for when it might land. For what it's worth, now, too, we don't have a clear timeline, but it's certain that the feature is coming, and that users will be able to 'reserve' their username before the functionality goes live.

This comes more than a year after the messaging giant was spotted working on an additional PIN functionality that would stop anyone with your username from being able to message you directly. Essentially, even if someone knows your username, they'd need your code to start a chat.

The development was highlighted by the folks over at, suggesting that both the Android and iOS betas of the messaging app contain hints about a username reservation feature.

Here's what that might look like once live:

Get more protection for your phone number with a username. People who don't have your number saved will see your username instead.

The early reservation feature will appear in WhatsApp's profile tab under 'Username,' with the logic behind it being to allow early users to secure their desired usernames before the feature officially goes live.

According to the report, the feature will become available to a larger audience soon after the early reservation feature goes live. Once live, WhatsApp users will have to abide by the messaging giant's username rules. These include, but might not be limited to:

• Usernames can't begin with "www."
• Usernames must contain at least one letter.
• Only certain characters are allowed: lowercase letters (a–z), numbers (0–9), periods, and underscores.
• Usernames can not end with a domain like .com or .net.
• Usernames can not start or end with a period.
• Character length must be between 3 and 30 characters.