When lively discussions occur in group chats, it’s easy to lose track. It often happens that some members engage in a conversation that is of little interest to the others. This is where (temporarily) muting the group comes in handy. However, this involves the risk of reading an important message too late or missing it altogether due to the flood of incoming messages.
Thanks to the new “mention” feature, this is now a problem of the past: Address group members by mentioning them, and they will receive a notification even if the group is muted (if configured accordingly). Simply type an “@” character in the text field, and select the desired contact to mention them.
As to be expected, the “mention” feature was implemented with privacy and security in mind. When mentioning someone, not their name but their Threema ID is sent, which prevents privacy leaks. If the mentioned Threema ID matches a contact in a recipient’s address book, the appropriate name is displayed instead of the Threema ID.
Mentions are fully supported in Threema for Android. On iOS, mentions are displayed correctly but cannot be created at this time. For Windows Phone, the next app update will add support for displaying mentions.
Threema 3.4 for Android contains numerous other changes and additions, including improvements for Threema Web. For all the details, please consult the change log.