With over two billion users around the world, WhatsApp is without a doubt one of the most popular messaging apps.
If you use WhatsApp, it’s likely you have the basics down, but there are a number of handy features you might not be aware of.
One of the of handiest tricks lets you tweak your privacy settings so your contacts won’t be able to see when you were last online.
WhatsApp’s ‘online’ feature is set to default, and tells your contacts if you’re online.
WhatsApp explained: “If a contact is online, they have WhatsApp open in the foreground on their device and are connected to the Internet. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean the contact has read your message.”
Meanwhile, the ‘last seen’ refers to the last time you used WhatsApp.
By default, WhatsApp sets your privacy settings to allow any contact see to see your read receipts, last seen, about and profile photo.
However, you can change these settings, meaning your friends won’t be able to see when you were last online:
- Open WhatsApp on your smartphone
- Tap the Settings icon in the bottom right of the screen
- Tap Account
- Tap Privacy
- Tap ‘Last Seen’, then Nobody
- You can also toggle off read receipts at the bottom of the screen
There are a few important caveats to remember:
– If you don’t share your last seen, you won’t be able to see other people’s last seen.
– If you turn off read receipts, you won’t be able to see read receipts from other people. Read receipts are always sent for group chats.
– If a contact has disabled read receipts, you will not be able to see that they have viewed your status update.
While there’s no official way to hide when you’re online, there’s a sneaky workaround for iPhone users on iOS 13.138208672551
Wait for a message to arrive on your iPhone, so a notification appears in your lock screen.
Press down on the notification, and the full text will appear – you ca scroll down to see the message in full.
Best of all, while you will have read the message, it won’t trigger the blue ticks, or show that you were online!