Before we jump in let’s see what is this post all about. In this post, I’ll walk you through some of the best WhatsApp tricks and tips that you probably haven’t heard of. Okay. Let’s get started!
WhatsApp is a freeware messaging app that lets you send text messages, make voice/video calls, share images, videos, and documents. WhatsApp features make it one of the best messaging apps available out there. Yes, you can find many other messaging apps but as of now WhatsApp is the best (Oops! Sorry if you don’t think so. Okay, one of the best).
Obviously, one day it’ll find a strong competitor but currently it’s the crown. You’re reading this post which shows that you use WhatsApp frequently and want to explore it more. Rest assured, I’ll not let you down.
In this post, I’ve come up with 25+ WhatsApp tricks and tips that you will certainly find useful. It’s obvious that you may already know some of these WhatsApp tips but I’m sure you may not know all of them.
WhatsApp Tricks and Tips
Sneak Peak:
- Share high quality multimedia files like photos and videos
- Broadcast list
- Chat without saving someone’s phone number
- Bring important chats on top
- Hide chat
- Send important messages to starred folder
- Hide last seen
- Add some blank space
- WhatsApp typing tricks to format chat messages
- Send your group link to add more members
- Mute groups that bother you most
- Respond to specific chat message
- Change auto-download settings
- Read chat messages without showing double blue tick to sender
- Block someone on WhatApp
- Share your live location
- Enable two-step verification for security
- Install two WhatsApp on one mobile without using a third party app
- Check your messages are encrypted or not
- Choose who can see your status
- Backup your chat messages
- Email chat
- Add contact shortcut to your mobile home screen
- Is your WhatsApp hacked?
- Don’t let others know when you read their message
- Mark messages as unread
Let’s discuss above mentioned WhatsApp tricks in details so you can actually use them.
WhatsApp Fingerprint Lock
The app developer has recently enrolled a new feature called ‘WhatsApp fingerprint lock’ to its social messaging app. By enabling this feature, users can lock their app. Every time you open your app, you will need to unlock it using your fingerprint.
Without any second thought you should enable WhatsApp fingerprint lock to secure your app. Follow these steps to enable fingerprint lock:
- Tap on three dots and then Settings.
- Thereafter, tap on Account.
- Then Privacy.
- Swipe down and enable Fingerprint Lock.
1. Share high quality multimedia files like photos and videos from WhatsApp
Our first WhatsApp trick is very useful when it comes to share multimedia files in their original quality. Wherever we capture a beautiful picture then we curiously share that with others through WhatsApp. But other people (whom you send the picture) receive a low quality picture due to WhatsApp default image compression and most of them don’t even give a feedback and some give feedback reluctantly.
But now it’s over because you can send high quality multimedia files from your app to others’ by using this WhatsApp trick.
To send a high quality picture from WhatsApp, don’t tap on Gallery icon instead tap on Document and send your picture through file manager.
This way you can send pictures without compromising with picture quality.
2. Broadcast List
Do you often share same message or media file to many of your contacts? Then this WhatsApp trick is for you. Instead of sending a message to all contacts one-by-one you can create WhatsApp broadcast list.
WhatsApp Broadcast list feature enables you create a list of contacts and share messages directly through that list to all your selected contacts. Your contacts will receive your message as a single normal chat and their replies will be received as normal too. Replies will not appear in broadcast list.
To create WhatsApp Broadcast list, just tap three dots appearing in the top right corner and then tap ‘New Broadcast’.
Now, pick contacts you would like to add to your list. That’s it. After creating your broadcast list, you can send same message to multiple contacts at once.
3. Chat without saving someone’s phone number
WhatsApp has introduced ‘click to chat‘ feature to its mobile and web based apps. Click to chat feature lets you chat with someone without adding his or her phone number to your phone’s address book.
Usually, to chat with someone you need to add his or her phone number to you address book. But this WhatsApp trick will help you chat with anyone without saving his/her phone number to your contact list.
To start a WhatsApp chat with someone without saving phone number, add his/her number with country code (without prefixing ‘+‘ sign) to the following link https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=
For example I’m from India so my country code is +91. See how I create a link to use click to chat feature https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=91700***0000. Now if I’ll click on the preceding link then this link will help me open a WhatsApp chat.
4. Bring important chats on top
WhatsApp has more features than you think. WhatsApp pin chat is another handy feature that you’d use. If your WhatsApp always remains crowed with messages then pin chat feature can help you bring important chats always on the top.
This feature lets you pin up to three chats and those will always remain on the top no matter how many messages you receive from other users.
To pin a chat, simply tap and hold on a person in the list and then tap on pin icon on the top. Repeat the procedure to pin more contacts. You can pin up to three contacts.
5. Hide WhatsApp chat
You can hide your chat messages using WhatsApp archive feature. This WhatsApp feature lets you archive your chats. You can use this feature to hide your chats.
Once you archive a chat then it does not appear in chats section, it goes to archive folder that can be accessed by swiping down to the bottom of the chats. At the end of chats, you can find archived chats option.
To archive a chat, long tap on a chat and then tap on archive icon.
6. Send important messages to starred folder
Whenever someone shares something important with you through WhatsApp then you should send that information to WhatsApp starred folder. It’s easy to access important messages directly from starred folder than to find them in individual chats.
Let me explain this WhatsApp feature.
Let’s suppose you’ve received a chat message from your friend that has something important say bank account details. After receiving that message, you did a long chat with your friend say you both exchanged 300 chat messages.
So now after some days, you need to find that important message again. What would you do?
Obviously, you’d open that WhatsApp chat again and try to find that message in the chat by scrolling all the way up. But if you would have starred that message then you could access that important message easily by going to starred folder.
So always star an important message.
To star a WhatsApp message, tap and hold on a message and then hit star icon from the top.
To see you starred messages, click on three dots, appearing on the top right corner, and tap on ‘Starred messages’.
I assume you found these WhatsApp tricks helpful, continuing reading to unveil more.
7. Hide WhatApp last seen
App by default shows your last seen to all users. However, it gives you the flexibility to control who can see your last seen. This WhatsApp tricks is very handy for those who want to hide their WhatsApp activities from others.
To hide you last seen, head to settings – Account – Privacy – Last Seen – Select preferred option.
- If you select last seen to ‘Everyone’ then anyone can see your last seen time.
- If you select ‘My contacts’ then contacts in your phone can only see your last seen time.
- Last option, Nobody, will hide your last seen from everyone.
Note: If you hide your last seen from everyone then you also cannot see others’ last seen time.
8. Add some blank space
Have you ever wondered how did someone send you a blank chat message? I tell you how to do that.
This WhatsApp trick will help you add some blank space into your messages to format them better.
While typing a chat message, simply add three back ticks or Grave accents from where you want to start blank space and then add space by using space bar or enter key.
Again add three back ticks to finish blank space and then start typing your message. This and next WhatsApp typing tricks will help you send more customized text messages to your contacts.
9. WhatsApp typing tricks to format chat messages
It’s been seen that a majority of users use WhatsApp for official communication. So if you’re one of them then you’d use this feature which allows you format your chat messages.
You can bold, italicize, and strike through your chat text to highlight important points in your chat. You can format WhatsApp text by using following WhatsApp typing tricks.
- Simply add (∼) tilde before and after a word to strikethrough,
- add (*) asterisk before and after a word to make text bold,
- and (_) underscore before and after a word to make it italic.
10. Send your group link to add more members
WhatsApp Group feature helps us create a group of people to chat and share important moments. Though some groups bother us and some don’t but they indeed help us stay connected with our friends and family.
If you’re an admin of a WhatsApp group then instead of adding someone to your group without his/her consent you should request him/her to join your group by sending a group invitation link.
It looks nice!
To send your group join link to someone, open your WhatsApp group then tap on three dots to open list menu and then tap on ‘Group Info’.
Now tap on ‘Add participant’ and then tap on ‘Invite to group via link’.
On the next page you’ll be able to see your group link that you can share with other WhatsApp users. You can also share this link through email or text message.
11. Mute WhatsApp Groups that bother you most
If you’ve joined many WhatsApp groups (actually if you’ve been abducted by many groups) but due to some reasons you cannot exit from them. Then here is a solution, simply mute those groups to stop seeing notifications from them.
When you mute a group, your phone stops showing notifications from that group, but you will be able to read messages by opening muted group. You can mute a group for 8 hours, 1 week, or 1 year.
To mute a group, open a WhatsApp group (which you want to mute) then tap on three dots.
Select ‘Mute notifications’ then select duration. I personally use this WhatsApp trick.
12. Respond to specific chat message
You can make your chat more engaging by replying to specific chat messages. Usually, if you send reply of a message after a few more chat messages then person on the other side may not understand what are you talking about.
For example see above screenshot if I reply to highlighted message now then my friend may not understand what am I saying.
On the contrary, if I reply using WhatsApp reply feature then he can easily understand.
So when you want to send reply of a specific chat message then simply tap and hold on that message and then tap on reply icon.
13. Stop WhatsApp auto-download settings
WhatsApp, by default, downloads all media files including images, videos, and documents automatically that your contacts send you. This is a handy feature if you’re on unlimited data.
But if you’re on metered internet connection (I still remember when I paid Rs. 400 or $10 for using only 1MB approx. data) then you’d change your WhatsApp auto-download settings to manually download.
This way you can control your data usage. Also, if you’re on unlimited data still I don’t recommend you to keep auto-downloads enable unless you’ve protected your phone with security password and nobody knows that password except you (I think you already know why am I mentioning this?).
Simply, head to settings then ‘Data usage’ and tap on ‘When using mobile data’ and untick all boxes. Repeat the process for Wi-Fi and roaming.
That’s it. Now no media will automatically get downloaded onto your device. Now you can manually decide which media file you want to download.
14. Read WhatsApp chat messages without showing double blue tick to sender
How many times have you made excuses for not replying to a friend?
Okay, keep it secret.
But from now you don’t need to make excuses because now using this WhatsApp trick you can read your chat messages without showing double blue tick to the sender.
To do so, all you need to do is just add WhatsApp widget onto your mobile home screen. WhatsApp home widget allows you read chat messages without opening the app and without showing blue ticks to the sender.
To add WhatsApp widget onto your mobile home screen, go to your phone’s widget section and add app’s widget.
15. Block someone on WhatsApp
If someone is bothering you and you can’t take it anymore then simply block that user.
To block someone use this WhatsApp trick, open chat and tap on three dots then tap on more and choose block option to block that person.
You can unblock a user anytime when you wish. For that purpose, go to settings – privacy – swipe down and tap on blocked contacts.
16. Share WhatsApp live location
I must say this’s really one of the appreciable WhataApp features. The developers behind this messaging app have added another new feature ‘Live Location’ that helps users share their live location with trusted contacts.
This WhatsApp feature will help you meet with your friends and loved easily; when you don’t know their exact location. This feature helped me once.
Also, WhatsApp live location feature can be used to share your location in emergency situations. You must try this feature. Who knows it could really help you someday?
You can share your live location with a contact by following these steps: open a chat (with whom you want to share your location) – Tap on attachment icon – tap on location – then tap on ‘Share live location’ – select live location duration say 15 minutes, 1 hour, or 8 hours.
That it. Person on the other side will be able to track your live location.
17. Enable two-step verification for WhatsApp security
If you’re concerned about your WhatsApp security then this feature is for you. This feature adds an extra layer of security to your WhatsApp account.
When you try to reinstall the app on your device, you need to enter only OTP number to verify your account. This is not good because if someone has access to your phone number then he or she can easily install your WhatsApp account on his or her device to peep in.
On the other hand, if you’ve enabled two-step verification then you will need to enter OTP and two-step verifcation PIN to access your account.
This way it’d be very difficult for others to misuse your account.
Without any second thought, just head to settings – privacy – two-step verification to enable this feature.
Here is a link to know how to set up two-step verification on WhatsApp.
18. Install two WhatsApp on one mobile without using a third party app
Are you using a third-party app to use two WhatsApp? Then for your information, you don’t need any app to do so. Your phone, if it runs on latest Android version, comes with inbuilt features that let you install more than one messaging apps.
All latest smartphones come with Dual Messenger/Clone App/Twin App that lets you use two accounts for one messaging app.
I want to let you know you don’t need to install any third-party app onto your device to use two WhatsApp accounts. I see many apps on my phone’s app store that help us make clone of apps. But frankly saying I can’t trust them (probably these are good).
One more thing, if your device allows you make clones (means making two apps of one to use two accounts at once) of apps then why would you install a third-party app to perform the same function.
As mentioned above, almost all latest smartphones come with app clone feature (name may vary). You can use that feature to use two similar apps like Facebook, Telegram, and of course WhatsApp on your device.
Samsung earlier had been proving this feature through ‘My Knox‘ app but it’s rolled out Knox service in the month of November, 2018. Don’t despair, because Samsung has substituted My Knox service with ‘Secure Folder‘.
If you own a Samsung smartphone whose Android version is Nougat or more then you can use Secure Folder (you can find this option in settings) to do the same job.
Other smartphone brands also offer such features that can help you make clone of apps for example Oppo smartphones have Clone App feature, similarly Vivo has Twin App.
Just find whether your phone has this feature or not.
For more information read how to install two WhatsApp in one phone without installing a third party app.
19. Check your messages are encrypted or not
Another important WhatsApp security feature. If you exchange confidential or sensitive information through WhatsApp then you msut check whether your messages are well encrypted or not.
Though WhatsApp latest update make all chat messages automatically encrypted, however, it allows its users to their encryption status.
To check your encryption status with a contact, open a chat with that contact then tap on three dots and choose ‘View contact’. Thereafter, tap on Encryption.
In the next step scan shown QR code with your friend’s mobile (perform same steps on his/her device then tap on Scan Code).
After scanning the code if green tick appears on the screen then it means your messages are well encrypted and no one else can see them.
20. Choose who can see your status
If you share status and wish only your select people see that then you can do so. Using this WhatsApp trick, you can show your status to select people only and you can change your settings frequently, if you like.
To select who can see your WhatsApp status, tap on Status tab and open settings menu by tapping on three dots then tap on Status privacy.
There you can see three options: My contacts, My contacts except, and Only share with. Here is a brief explanation:
- My contacts: This option will show your status to all of your contacts.
- My contacts except: This option will show your status to everyone except some users that you’ve selected. Your selected users cannot see your WhatsApp status.
- Only share with: You can use this option to show your status to select people. Only users selected by you will be able to see your WhatsApp status.
21. Backup your chat messages
Having a backup is always good. You can backup WhatsApp chat messages to restore them anytime. WhatsApp can save back up of your chat messages to Google drive.
This could be useful if you need to delete (you lose all of your chats) and reinstall your WhatsApp.
You can enable backup feature by going to the settings – chats – chat backup – tap on backup chat.
You’ll need to provide a Google address to save your backup online and also you can set when to backup for example you’ve options like daily, weekly, monthly, and whenever you wish.
Do you want to organize your Gmail inbox to handle your emails perfectly? If yes, then read 15+ best Gmail tips and tricks to handle your emails perfectly.
22. Email WhatsApp chat
If you want to backup an individual chat then you can do so by sending that chat to your email address. Yes, you can email your chat to save a backup copy.
Simply open a chat that you want to email and then tap on three dots appearing at the top right corner then go to ‘more’ and select ‘Email chat’ option.
You should send important information like bank account details, contact details, and the like to your email.
23. Add contact shortcut to your mobile home screen
Sometimes we open WhatsApp again and again to check messages of an individual contact. If you also do so then you should add that contact directly to your device’s home screen.
App’s contact shortcut feature allows you create shortcut of a contact to see message notifications from that contact directly from the device home screen. And also by tapping on that shortcut you can directly open a chat.
To create a contact shortcut, long tap on a contact then tap on three dots (menu) and then select ‘Add chat shortcut’. Now a shortcut will be added to your mobile home screen.
24. Is your WhatsApp hacked?
There are many apps available on Google Play Store that let you use your WhatsApp on two mobile devices simultaneously; by default you can use WhatsApp on only one device at time. Such apps use WhatsApp web feature to help you use two WhatsApp with same mobile number.
But many users (especially your friends, family members or people who have access to your device) misuse that type of apps. It’s a kind of hack that people use to peep in others’ accounts.
You can do a routine security checkup to make sure your app is secure.
To check whether you’ve been hacked or not, tap on settings (three dots) – select WhatsApp web. You can see there whether your device is being used on another device or not.
If you see someone is using your app then simply hit log out of all devices button and next time don’t give your phone to someone (whom you cannot trust).
25. Don’t let others know when you read their message
You can see when actually someone has read your message by using read receipts feature. Simply long tap on a chat message (sent by you) and then hit “i” icon to read delivery receipt.
This feature can also be used in group chats to see how many members have read your message.
You can turn off your read receipts to don’t let others know when you’ve read their messages.
You can turn off read receipts feature by heading to settings – account – privacy – swipe down and untick read receipts.
Note: If you turn off this feature then you also cannot read others’ delivery receipts.
26. Mark messages as unread
You can mark a chat message as unread if you think that message needs further attention or you don’t have time to respond.
Messages that you will mark as unread will appear on your chat history with a green dot (to grab your attention).
You can mark a chat message as unread by long tapping on a contact then tapping on three dots then selecting ‘Mark as unread’.
That’s all from my side. I’ve showed you 25+ WhatsApp tricks to use your app more effectively. I’m curious to know whether you liked this post or not.
Do you have more WhatsApp tricks for our readers? If yes then must share with us.