WhatsApp has become increasingly popular over the years - and it definitely does have its uses. It's all encrypted, and gives us the option of calling and messaging people even when we're separated by oceans - but many of us are missing out on a lot of secret features.
In fact, we're only scratching the surface when it comes to tips and tricks to use on the app.
1. Search your chatsOn iOS, you can scroll up when you're at the top of the message page, displaying a search bar - and a search icon on Android phones. From there you can search all your messages and group chats for a specific word. And if you want to search through a specific chat, you can click on the specific message, then the contact info - then click 'Chat Search'.
If you head to the settings within the app, Data and Storage Usage, then Storage Usage - then you can see which chats have used the most data.
You can head over to the web version of the site, and sync up your messages to speak and send files from your computer, as long as you head to Settings, WhatsApp Web/Desktop, then scan the QR code on the browser. As long as your phone is nearby and connected to the internet, it should work.
If you head to Settings then Data and Storage Usage, you can find Media Auto-Download. If you switch this to Wi-FI only, you won't be auto-downloading every video or photo sent your way when you're out and about.
Every contact on WhatsApp will automatically show when they were last online, but you can disable this by heading to Settings, Account, Privacy, Last Seen - and then switch to nobody.
Those double blue ticks can get you in a world of trouble if you don't want to respond to a message yet, but you can turn them off if you head to Settings, Account, Privacy, then toggle off Read Receipts. The one downside is that you won't see when other people have read messages either.
If you don't want to do this, Apple users can get Siri to read the message so that the read receipt doesn't appear still. For Android users, you can read without giving them the blue ticks if you look at the message through notifications.
Head to Settings, Chats, then toggle off Save to Camera Roll/Show Media in Gallery if you don't want shared files to automatically be added to your phone.
If you ever want to send a message to just one recipient in a group chat in a quick and easy way, you can press and hold their message in the chat, select more, then reply privately. This will send you to a private chat with them, including the message you're replying to.
9. Mark a chat as unreadIf you've already read a message but need to mark it to reply later on, swipe left to right and mark as unread on iOS. For Android users, you long press on the chat, open the menu, then mark it as unread.
If you want to spice up your messaging, you can add an asterisk either side of a word to make it *bold*, a tilde either side for ~strikethrough~, or underscores for _italic_.
If one message is more important than others to you, you can pin it to the top of the list. For iOS, swipe left to right and Pin Chat, on Android, long press the chat, then press the pin at the top of the screen. You can do this with up to three chats.
Double tap or hold down on a specific message, then press the star, so that it will be added to your Starred Messages section.
This might not be the best idea, but you can find out specifically when your message was read if you swipe right to left on a specific message for iOS users, while Android users press and hold on a message before tapping the 'i' icon.
There you go, you're a WhatsApp master!
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