WHATSAPP TIPS & TRICKS

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps with more than one billion active users. New features are actively added to the app and every few weeks we come across an interesting edition.

Here are some of the best and lesser-known features that you should try out now.

Dark Mode Feature: After almost about a decade of waiting, Whatsapp launched its Dark Mode Feature for Android and iOS Users. This latest Dark Mode on Whatsapp increasing the interest for users to use it more than daily hours.

Dark Mode Feature is easy to enable and disable at any time. Just follow these steps to enable the WhatsApp dark theme.

Go to Settings > Chat > Display > Theme > Enable Dark Theme options. Now you can see dark mode for WhatsApp.

Format WhatsApp Messages: Change font, Bold, italics, strikethrough – You can also format fonts of your WhatsApp messages. To do so, just long-press the portion of text you wish to format after typing it in the message input field. Now you will get the option to change the format to bold, strikethrough, or italics. You can also ‘Monospace’ option to change the font.

You also can manually format test as follows:

• *ABC* = ABC (Bold)
• _ABC_ = ABC (Italics)
• ~ABC~ = ABC (Strikethrough).

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.

• iOS: Chats > Specific chat > Specific message > Double-tap or hold down and press star.
• Android: Chats > Specific chat > Specific message > Hold down and press star.

Stop photos, videos from automatically saving in your phone: If you get fed up to see the pictures your friends have sent you in your phone’s Photo or Gallery folder, go to Settings > Chats > turn off Save Incoming Media.

You can also customise certain media sent from particular chats to download automatically, though. For that, you have to manually open the chat that you want WhatsApp to automatically download incoming media.

• For Android users, after opening the chat, click on the info of the person’s account, then tap on Media visibility. Choose from the three options available to either automatically download media from the chat or not.

• For iPhone users, click the info after opening the particular person or group’s chat and click on ‘Save to Camera Roll’ and select from Default, Always and Never. The default option is the setting that you have chosen for the whole app, which has been mentioned at the starting of this header.

Check exactly when a particular person read your Whatsapp message: Blue ticks notify you that your message has been read, but they don’t tell you when exactly your contact read the message. Here is how you can check the same:

• Long press the particular message you wish to inquire about.
• Now press the ‘i’ icon in the top bar and you will see when the person reads your message.

Hide a WhatsApp chat: People whom you have recently talked to appear closer to the top in your WhatsApp chat list. If you don’t want a particular conversation to be noticeable, you can hide it as “Archive”.

Just long-press the conversation and select the Archive button on the top. This particular chat will now disappear from the list. You can access it by scrolling all the way to the bottom.

Mark messages to answer later: If you have read a message but wish to answer it later, you can simply long-press the conversation head in the ‘Chat’ tab and select ‘mark as unread’ option.

This won’t erase ‘Blue ticks’ or read receipts but will mark the message with a bloated green dot that will serve as a reminder. You can later answer the text at your own volition.

Limit data used by WhatsApp: To restrict the data consumed by the app, this is what you need to do. Go to settings > Data and Storage usage.

From here you can decide what all media (Photos, videos, documents, audio) the app can download while consuming your data.

Share Live Location (Real Time): You can now share the live location with your contacts. The location is updated in real-time and you can keep a tab on exact whereabouts of specific contacts. You can share location for 15 minutes, 1 Hour or 8 Hours straight.

• To do so, just tap the attachment icon in the text input field.
• Now select ‘location’ and then select ‘Share Live Location’.

Delete images or videos from a particular WhatsApp group or contact: If a particular WhatsApp group or contact is taking a lot of storage space, you can delete messages, chats, videos, and audio from a specific WhatsApp group.

• Go to Settings > Data and Storage usage
• Select ‘Storage Usage’ and you will see all groups and contacts ranked according to the storage space they are taking.
• Select the group and tap on the ‘manage messages’ option at the bottom.
• Now, select and clear whatever data (videos, GIFs, Photos, etc.) that you wish to get rid of.

Delete message after you have sent them: This is one feature that WhatsApp added in late 2017. The App now allows you to ‘unsend’ messages that you have already sent, but there is a catch. The feature works for messages sent in the last 60 minutes.

Also, the delete message feature will be rendered ineffective, even within the 7-minute time frame, if someone has already quoted your message.

• Long press a message.
• Select delete for everyone.

Read deleted messages on WhatsApp: There is a way to read messages that your friends have deleted from their end.  Just download a notification log app and grant access to read the notification.  This app will keep a log of all incoming notifications and will also come in handy when you wish to retrieve a notification you have accidentally swiped off.

Hide particular contacts from viewing your story: Stories are a great way of expressing your mood and can be quite personal. If you don’t want to share them with all WhatsApp contacts, you can prohibit particular contacts from viewing your status updates or stories as they now stand.

• Go to WhatsApp settings > Account > Privacy.
• Select Status > ‘My contacts except’.
• Now select specific contacts you wish to avoid and tap the tick mark below.

Change Whatsapp Number: If you are discontinuing the number registered with WhatsApp, you can replace it with your new number and keep using the same WhatsApp account.

You can find the option under Settings > Account > Change number. Your new number should be active to do so.

Change Whatsapp chat background: You can change the WhatsApp chat background as well. To customize it:

• Go to Settings > Chats > Wallpaper.
• Now select an image from your gallery or from any other folder, adjust it and apply it.

Send Long Duration Audio Recordings: WhatsApp has added another new feature that lets users send long Audio messages.

You can now press and hold the microphone icon and then slide it to a lock button. Now you can record long messages hands-free.

Hear voice messages privately via earpiece: Did you know that you can hear Voice messages you receive on WhatsApp using your phone’s earpiece (one that you use to hear other person’s voice during phone calls)?

Just play a WhatsApp voice recorded message, and lift the phone to your ear – the same way that you’d attend a phone call – and the message will automatically start playing via the earpiece.

Go Incognito: You can’t get away with not replying to messages if people can see when you were last online, so turn off WhatsApp’s ‘last seen’ feature to go incognito. Now you can ignore people at your leisure…

How: It’s in the Privacy menu, under Last Seen, and if you want you can hide from everybody, or only allow your contacts to see your activity.

Search all your chats: Someone might have sent you their address or you might remember talking about a specific programme or film but you don’t want to scroll through all your messages to try and find what you’re looking for. At the top of all your chats on iOS there is a search bar. On Android, there’s a search icon.

You can type anything into the search bar, from the start of a city name if you’re looking for an address to a specific word and all the chats with that word will appear below as specific messages. Clicking on a respective result will take you to that part of the chat conversation you had.

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.

• iOS: Chats > Specific chat > Tap on contact info at the top > Chat Search > Type in the search bar that appears at the top of that specific chat.
• Android: Chats > Specific chat > Open the menu top right > Search > Type in the search bar that appears at the top of that specific chat.

Email your chat conversations: You can also email the entire conversation with a contact. To do so:

• Go to Settings > Chat > Chat History.
• Now select the option to ‘Email Chat’. Select the conversation you wish to export (with or without media) and then complete the process using any email app of your choice. The Chat will be mailed as a .txt attachment.