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WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps on the planet, but despite its dominant position, it doesn’t rest on its laurels. WhatsApp is constantly adding new features that make the messaging app even more useful. However, it’s got to the point whereWhatsApphas so many great features that you might not even be aware of a lot of them.
Some of the features that aren’t that well-known are real game-changers, such as the ability to reply privately to someone in a group message. Once you know the feature exists, you’ll wonder how you lived without it, but it’s all to easy to be unaware of the many great WhatsApp features.
How to use WhatsApp’s website and desktop app to respond to chats
Did you know you can read all your WhatsApp chats and messages on your PC or Mac? You can even respond, using a bigger keyboard. Here’s how.
We have some in-depth articles that focus on some of the most useful WhatsApp tips and tricks, such ashow to screen , how to use the sameWhatsApp account on multiple phones, and how touse two different WhatsApp accountson the same phone. However, there are plenty of other tips and tricks that can make your WhatsApp experience even better.
WhatsApp general tips and tricks
How to edit a WhatsApp message
WhatsApp started rolling out the ability toedit a messagein May 2023. You can make changes to any WhatsApp message you post as long as you do so within 15 minutes. After that, you won’t be able to make any further changes.
iOS & Android:
Send your location to a contact
WhatsApp allows you to share your location in a message. This is useful if you’re meeting a friend; you can allow your contact to see your live location for 15 minutes, one hour, or eight hours.
Search all your chats
You know you had a chat with someone about a great movie, but you can’t remember who it was. Thankfully, you can search all of your chats for the word ‘movie’ to try to locate the chat and find the name of the film.
Search a specific chat
If you want to search a specific chat rather than all of your chats, this is possible too. Maybe you had a conversation about a specific meeting place, or they sent you their other contact number or their address for example.
Save your data allowance
If you’ve got a limited data allowance, you don’t want WhatsApp munching it all away. Thankfully, you can customize things so that media will only download when you’re on Wi-Fi.
How to screen share in WhatsApp from your phone or desktop
WhatsApp allows you to share your screen during a video call, so that all participants can view the same thing in real-time. Here’s how.
WhatsApp privacy tips and tricks
Turn on Disappearing Messages
Disappearing Messageswill make any new messages in a chat disappear after 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days. It’s possible to turn it on for specific chats, or all chats.
For specific chats:
For all chats:
Send a disappearing image or video
It’s possible to send animage or video that disappearsonce the recipient has viewed it once. When the recipient closes your picture, it will disappear, although this won’t stop them from taking a screenshot.
Require Face ID or Touch ID to unlock WhatsApp
If you want to protect your chats from prying eyes, you canlock the entire WhatsApp appon iPhone, so that it can’t be opened without using Face ID or Touch ID.
How to see and turn off Last Seen
WhatsApp’s Last Seen feature allows you to see when someone last checked WhatsApp. If a contact hasn’t disabled this feature, when they were last seen will appear under their name at the top of an open chat. You can choose to allow everyone to see your Last Seen status, limit it to your contacts, exclude specific people, or turn the feature off for everyone.
Hide the blue ticks
Those blue ticks that show when you’ve read a message can get you in a whole world of trouble, especially when you don’t reply instantly. you’re able to turn them off, but it’s worth noting that if you do, you won’t get read receipts for your messages either.
If you’re an Apple user, and you don’t want to turn off read receipts completely, if you get Siri to read the message, the blue ticks won’t appear. For Android users, reading your messages in notifications will stop the sender from seeing the blue ticks.
Hide your profile picture
You might not want everyone tosee your profile picture, especially if you’re 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. Either way, you can choose if everyone, no-one, only your contacts or your contacts except certain people see your picture.
How to block a WhatsApp contact
If you block a contact, you won’t be able to send or receive messages or make or receive calls from them. Even if you unblock them, you won’t see any messages sent to you whilst they were blocked.
Stop images and video appearing in your gallery
Sharing photos and video on WhatsApp is great, but you might not want it added to your phone’s gallery. On Android, a folder is created in the gallery by default, while on iOS, it saves to your camera roll. If you don’t want that, you can turn it off.
iOS and Android:
Change automatic image/video saving preferences for specific chats
It’s also possible to change the automatic image and video preferences for specific chats if you want to automatically save images and videos from specific people.
How to set your WhatsApp voice messages to disappear after being heard
You can already make texts, photos, and videos disappear. You can do now the same for voice messages after they’ve been heard.
WhatsApp chats tips and tricks
Reference and reply to a specific message
WhatsApp allows you to reply to a particular message, presenting it above your reply to make it easy for the person or people you are messaging to see what you are replying to.
Reply to a group message privately
It’s possible to reply to a group message privately in your one-to-one chat, without having to find the one-to-one chat you have with that particular person.
Turn words bold, italic or strikethrough
Sometimes certain words need more emphasis and shouty caps just don’t cut it. Don’t worry, WhatsApp allows you to make whichever words or phrases you want bold, italic, or strike through them altogether.
Send a voice or video message
Don’t have time to write out a lengthy reply or just can’t be bothered to? No problem. WhatsApp allows you to sendvoice messagesor video messages to your contacts which is great if you’re walking somewhere for example, making constant typing a bit of a pain.
Speed up playback of a voice message
you’re able to speed up playback of a voice message by 1.5x or 2x, allowing you to listen to longer messages quicker. It’s simple to do, and doesn’t change the pitch of the person’s voice.
Mark chats as unread
If you may’t reply to an important message now, and don’t want to forget, you can mark it as unread to remind you to do it later.
Pin a chat to the top
If there’s someone you chat to a lot on WhatsApp, you can pin their chat to the top of the chat list so that you can always find them quickly.
Archive your chats
Archive Chat allows you to hide a conversation from your Chats screen. It does not delete the chat - it just allows you to remove it from your main chat screen without losing it, helping you organize your conversations.
you may archive groups or individual chats, and they will disappear until you pull down from the top of the Chats display and tap the Archived Chats tab.
Bookmark important messages
Some messages are more important than others. Whether it’s a date you need to remember or a good restaurant you’ve been recommended. It’s possible to bookmark these messages and find them all easily in the Starred Messages section.
Delete a specific message within a chat
Just as you can star a specific message within a chat, you can also delete a specific message within a chat. You can also"delete for everyone"but you have to do this within two days - the time limit used to be a lot less so this has increased since the feature first appeared.
Choosing delete for everyone will also result in a message appearing in the chat saying the message has been deleted which although looks suspicious, could be better than whatever message you sent in the first place.
How to quickly transfer your WhatsApp chats to a new phone (without a backup)
Meta has made it so much easier to move your WhatsApp messages and account data from an old phone to a new one. Here’s how.
Other WhatsApp tips and tricks
Take a look at Channels
WhatsApp Channels are broadcast channels that you can follow from people organizations that you’re interested in. For example, if you’re a sports fan, there may be a channel for your favorite team. The channel will contain posts from the official account of that team, which you can read but can’t reply to.
There are channels from brands, news outlets, sports teams, and more.
Set up a Community
If your group chats are getting too busy to follow, you can try setting up community. This allows you to create multiple group chats under one main umbrella, and you can opt to join only those chats that are relevant to you. It’s ideal for larger groups where a single group chat just gets far too messy.
