Recently WhatsApp added “blue ticks” aka read receipts and now WhatsApp has decided to give the users ability to disable them in settings. The new version 2.11.44 with the read receipt disable support is only available on the WhatsApp website right now. The toggle to disable read receipts can be accessed under privacy in the profile settings.
In addition, the new version brings support for heads-up notifications, which have been introduced in Android 5.0. For those of you, who are unaware of the heads-up notifications, with Lollipop Google has started allowing the developers to set-up priority flags for their notifications and when high, max or full-screen priority flag has been set on a particular notification, it triggers the head-up notification display. Heads-up notifications arrive on top on whatever the consumer is using at that point and is presented for a short period of time with an expanded layout exposing possible actions. After this period of time, the notification goes back to the notification shade.
Source: androidos
