September 22, 2026 — Hidden community subgroups

Features

Hidden subgroup visibility (#1522) Subgroup visibility is now part of the public community API. A hidden subgroup is omitted from the community’s subgroup list for users who are not members; a visible subgroup appears for everyone. Visibility is fixed at creation or link time — WhatsApp does not support changing it later. New types in whatsapp_rust::features::community:

SubgroupVisibility — Visible (default) or Hidden.
CreateSubgroupOptions — name, participants, parent JID, and visibility, with new(...) and with_visibility(...) builders.
LinkSubgroupOptions — one (jid, visibility) pair per group.

New methods on Community:

create_subgroup_with_options — create a subgroup with an explicit add-time visibility in one round-trip.
link_subgroups_with_options — link existing groups with a per-group visibility, mixing visible and hidden in a single IQ.

The visible-only wrappers create_subgroup and link_subgroups still work and default to SubgroupVisibility::Visible, so existing call sites do not need to change.

use whatsapp_rust::features::community::{
    CreateSubgroupOptions, LinkSubgroupOptions, SubgroupVisibility,
};

let options = CreateSubgroupOptions::new("Mods only", &participants, community_jid.clone())
    .with_visibility(SubgroupVisibility::Hidden);
client.community().create_subgroup_with_options(options).await?;

let link = vec![
    LinkSubgroupOptions::new(a_jid, SubgroupVisibility::Visible),
    LinkSubgroupOptions::new(b_jid, SubgroupVisibility::Hidden),
];
client.community().link_subgroups_with_options(&community_jid, &link).await?;

CommunitySubgroup gained an is_hidden_group: bool field, parsed from the hidden_group property in the MEX subgroup listing. It defaults to false when the server omits the field, so existing readers keep working. See the community management guide for a full walkthrough.

​Features

Features