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People love using WhatsApp due to its simplicity. Since launched back in 2009 WhatsApp changed the way people communicate. One of the best achievements of WhatsApp is its success in defeating BBM cs to become the world’s most-used messaging app.
Just like other mobile apps, WhatsApp also improved to deliver more features to gain more users and keep those registered ones. We can now make a voice and video call with WhatsApp.
But still, simplicity is something that never change in WhatsApp. We can still use this app without any distraction from ads (at least until today) and annoying push notifications from the WhatsApp side.
WhatsApp has a number of features to ease us communicating with family and friends. To get the most out of WhatsApp you can also apply some tricks to make everything easier.
Here are the top 22 WhatsApp tricks that you probably don’t know.
1. Hide the blue ticks
WhatsApp lets you know if your messages has been read by the recipients via blue ticks icon. While most users find it useful, there are some who consider it as an annoying feature due to privacy violation. You may don’t want your friends/family knowing if you have read their message because you can’t reply the message immediately. You can hide the blue ticks to prevent someone else from knowing the message status they sent to you.
Chats -> Settings -> Account -> Privacy -> untick Read receipts.
2. Format the messages before sending
Whether just for fun or to highlight a specific phrase. You can format your message before it is sent. WhatsApp allows you to add three simple effects over your words: bold, italic and strikethrough.
- bold: add an asterisk either side of the word or phrase (*something*)
- italic: add an underscore either side of the word or phrase (_something_)
- : add a tildes to either side of the word or phase (~something~)
3. Mute annoying groups
WhatsApp allows us to create a group chat to enable us stay in touch with a number of close friends, office mates, or any group with the same interest. Yes, it’s cool to keep us up to date and keep in touch with people we really care about. However, joining too many groups can be annoying. If you find a certain group is too active and annoying but you don’t want to leave because you feel embarrassed, you can mute the group to keep it silent.
Tap and hold your preferred group -> Tap the speaker icon at the top
4. Block annoying people
WhatsApp is different to BBM, Line and other messaging apps. In WhatsApp you can send messages by just knowing the phone number. This opens an opportunity for anyone to send messages anonymously. Luckily, WhatsApp also comes with blocking feature to enable us stop receiving messages from annoying people.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread -> Three-dot icon -> More -> Block.
5. Take your favorite contacts to home screen
If you regularly using WhatsApp chance that you have some contacts that you chat most frequent. WhatsAppp allows you to add those contacts to the home screen to make it easy for you accessing them.
Chats -> Tap and hold a chat thread -> Tap the three-dot icon -> Add chat shortcut.
6. Hide your profile picture
Like I mentioned earlier. In WhatsApp you a free to send messages to anyone by just knowing the phone number. No acceptance is required. But, you can prevent anyone from seeing your profile picture. You can set to show your profile picture only to those who added you in their contacts. This will be helpful if you are part of several groups where you don’t know everyone in the group. Or perhaps you just fancy being a little mysterious for the day.
Chats -> Three-dots icon -> Settings -> Account -> Privacy -> Profile photo.
7. Bookmark important messages
Let’s say you are involved in a WhatsApp meeting with your office mates discussing about the next project. To ensure you are not missing anything you can bookmark the important messages from the discussion to re-read them later.
Tap and hold a or multiple chats within conversation -> Tap the star icon at the top.
8. Send a public message privately
WhatsApp also enables you to send the same message to multiple contacts at once. This will be helpful for inviting your friends to join your party or any event. Why not post the message to a group?.
Simple enough. You may don’t want to invite all members in the group. So, if you still want invite your close friends via WhatsApp then broadcast will be a great idea.
Chats -> Three-dot icon -> New broadcast.
9. Find out how long you’ve been ignored
Apart from message status, in WhatsApp you can also check the last status of each contact you have. You can check when did the last time they online so you can easily conclude if you are being ignored or not.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread (personal chat, not group) -> Three-dot icon -> View contact.
10. Create custom notifications
WhatsApp also lets you to treat a certain contact differently. For instance you may want to add custom notifications for your favorite contacts to prevent them from blending into the crowd. Some custom notifications you can apply include notification tone, ringtone, popup notification and a lot more.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread -> Three-dot icon -> View contact -> Custom notifications.
11. Access WhatsApp from web and desktop
Apart from smartphone you can also access your WhatsApp via web browser and desktop app. This will be helpful if you use WhatsApp for business. To access WhatsAp from web just simply visit https://web.whatsapp.com/. Otherwise, if you want to access WhatsApp from desktop you can download and install the desktop app first. Currently, WhatsApp only supports Mac and Windows.
To access WhatsApp from both web and desktop you can scan the available QR code using WhatsApp in your smartphone.
Chats -> Three-dot icon -> WhatsApp Web.
12. Backup chats to the cloud
If you wish it you can also backup your WhatsApp to the cloud. For what?
You never know what are going to happen in the future. Who knows you will need your WhatsApp chats to solve a specific problem. So, having an online backup of your WhatsApp chats is not a fault. We have covered this in the previous post. Go for it for the how-to.
13. Send a specific chat to someone via email
For a certain reason you may also want to send a certain chat to someone else via email. Fortuitously, WhatsApp has a feature to do this.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread -> Three-dot icon -> More -> Email chat.
14. Mention someone in a group
Communicating in WhatsApp group is getting easier since WhatsApp allows us to mention someone in the group. Mentioning someone in WhatsApp group is extremely easy, just like in Twitter, Facebook and other social medias. Just type “@” symbol followed by your contact name.
15. Quote a specific chat to make it clear
The quote feature in WhatsApp is not different to Twitter’s. You can use this feature to ensure which part within a conversation which you want to respond. This is a great feature to prevent any miss communication.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread -> Tap and hold a chat -> Tap the arrow icon at the top (leftmost)
16. Disable automated download for images and videos
By default, WhatsApp will download every images sent to your account. If your contacts frequently send the images over and over, it’s not good for both your storage and bandwidth cap. You can set your WhatsApp to manually download the images/videos instead of automated.
Chats -> Three-dots icon -> Settings -> Data usage.
17. Hide a specific chat thread from conversation list
If you don’t want to delete a chat thread but don’t want just anyone to read it either, you can hide it with the archive option.
Chats -> Tap and hold a chat thread -> tap the archive icon.
18. Hide WhatsApp media from gallery
In Android, all the images and videos downloaded from WhatsApp will be available in gallery. Many users find it useless. If you think so, you can hide WhatsApp images and videos from appearing in your gallery.
Open file manager in your Android and select device storage -> WhatsApp -> Media. Rename the WhatsApp Images (and WhatsApp Video) by adding a dot symbol. It will looks like this
“WhatsApp Images” >> “.WhatsApp Images”
19. Tell your friends your current location
If you want to invite your friends to join you in a coffee shop or party, you can share your current location via WhatsApp to guide them. WhatsApp uses Google Maps as its map. Just be sure to send the accurate location to make everything okay.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread -> Clip icon -> Location.
20. Set a custom background of your chats
WhatsApp default background of chats is not bad actually. But, you can change it anytime as you want to meet your flavor. You can use your own images or the ones offered by WhatsApp.
Chats -> Tap any chat thread -> Three-dot icon -> Wallpaper.
21. Tell WhatsApp your problems
If you experiencing some troubles with your WhatsApp you can let WhatsApp know in order to let the WhatsApp team fixing your problem.
Chats -> Three-dot icon -> Settings -> About and help -> Contact us.
22. Easily forward a message to others
WhatsApp also makes it easy for you to forward an important message to someone else in your contact. This will be helpful for an emergency or any situation that require a quick response.
Chats -> Tap a chat thread -> tap and hold a specific chat -> tap the arrow button (rightmost).
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