WhatsApp is now used by more than two billion people worldwide. How often do you use WhatsApp? Several times a week? Or even daily? We are sure that you still do not know all these functions.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messengers in the world.
Chatting, sending voice messages, or making phone calls: WhatsApp replaces all the functions of a classic telephone. The messenger service is the communication tool par excellence. In the meantime, 2 billion people regularly use the offer taken over by Facebook in 2014. But not all WhatsApp tricks are known to all users. You should know these WhatsApp functions.
Table of Contents
Retrieve Sent Messages
If you have accidentally sent a message, you must react immediately or delete it for both chat partners (see point 2). But you don’t always want the other person to see that a message was not intended for them. Once the news has reached the WhatsApp server (you can tell by the gray tick behind it), you can no longer remove the message. At least not in such a way that the recipient doesn’t notice anything. If you have sent a message by mistake, you must immediately (!) activate the phone’s flight mode. This cuts the network connection and prevents the transmission from arriving on the WhatsApp server. Then delete them. You can then turn Airplane mode off again.
Completely Delete Messages On WhatsApp
WhatsApp users have been waiting for this function for an exceptionally long time: if you were too slow for tip 1, if you sent a message and maybe even read it, there was no way of deleting it from the recipient’s phone for years. But that has finally changed. However, deletion is only possible under one condition: the sent message, which must be removed from your phone and the recipient, must not be older than seven minutes. So if you react quickly enough, you can get rid of something that has been sent unintentionally.
Here’s how it works: Tap and hold the relevant message, and a menu bar will appear on both Android and iOS. If you tap on the recycle bin or on “delete,” you will be asked where to delete the message. Here, select “Delete for everyone” to delete the news on their phone and the recipient’s phone. Necessary: Although the addressee can no longer read the message, he sees a note in the chat history that a message has been deleted
Bypass The Blue Ticks
WhatsApp flags messages from chat partners. There are three stages:
- A gray tick
- Two gray hooks
- Two blue ticks
A gray tick means: The message has arrived on the WhatsApp server and delivered to the recipient. Two gray ticks appear when this is done. The two ticks turn blue when the recipient has read the message. If you do not want your chat partner to see when you have viewed your messages, you can suppress the blue color.
To do this, go to the app settings and select “Account.” Then tap on “Privacy.” Here you will find the item “Read Receipts.” If you remove the tick behind it, other people can no longer see whether you have viewed a message. The disadvantage is that you can no longer recognize it from your chat partners.
However, if you have an iPhone with a 3-D touch function (from model 6s), there is another way: press and hold the chat that you want to read unnoticed with your finger. The conversation history then opens without the chat partner seeing that you have viewed the message.
Pay With WhatsApp
Paying with Messenger: This is already possible in India. There, users can now send money via WhatsApp. The local payment system Unified Payments Interface was integrated into the app. Indian users, for example, are happy to pay for taxis. After WhatsApp tests such functions, it usually doesn’t take long for the global roll-out to follow.
Write In Bold, Italics, And Strikethrough
If you want to give your messages more expression, WhatsApp gives you the option of writing parts of the text in bold or italics or crossing them out. This is how it works: Text parts that should appear bold must be enclosed in asterisks, e.g., like this: *bold*. Surround everything that should appear in italics with underscores: _italics_. If you want the text to appear as strikethrough, put a tilde before and after it: ~strikethrough~. Don’t be surprised: the framing characters remain visible while you write. However, as soon as you send the message, these disappear, and the recipient only receives the formatted texts.
Send Messages Without Typing
In WhatsApp, users can send messages without using their nimble fingers. Thanks to Siri and the Google Assistant. Android users can use Google Assistant to speak messages, iPhone users send messages directly via Siri. The digital helpers can also read out incoming messages.
Also Read: The Google Assistant 2022 Gets These Four New Functions
Free Up Disk Space
Specific contacts use WhatsApp intensively to send pictures, videos, or gifs. This can quickly take up your storage space. However, Android and iOS users can easily create new space thanks to a feature of WhatsApp.
Go to WhatsApp settings and select “Data and storage usage.” At the bottom, tap Storage Usage. Select the contact whose content you want to clean up in the overview that is then displayed. Then go to “Manage” at the bottom. Here you can now select the formats you want to remove (videos, photos, voice messages, etc.). If you tap on “Empty” at the bottom, you’ll have significantly more storage space on your mobile phone in no time at all.
See How Many Messages You Have Already Sent
Are you interested in the number of messages you have sent and received? It’s so easy to find out:
To do this, go to the menu, then to “Settings,” then select “Data usage” and then “Network usage.” You can see the total number of sent and received messages and other information.
Anyone who uses iOS can have numerous other statistics displayed by WhatsApp. To do this, go to the menu and select “Settings.” Then tap “Account” and finally “Storage Usage.” On Android, go to Settings, Data and Storage Usage, Storage Usage, and finally, the contact you want. Depending on the operating system, you can see how many messages you have sent to individual contacts and how many messages came back from them. You can also see how many pictures, videos, etc., you have exchanged with this person.
Mute Chat
Many people mute their phones when they don’t want to be disturbed by incoming calls and messages. But what can you do if you are expecting an important WhatsApp message and therefore do not want to put your phone on silent but are constantly being disturbed by posts in a particular WhatsApp group? The solution is straightforward:
- Call up the disruptive chat.
- Go to the menu and select “Mute.” You can then choose how long you don’t want to disturb posts in this conversation and whether you want to receive notifications.
- Tap “OK” and enjoy the peace.
- Unmute by going back into the chat, bringing up the menu, and selecting “Mute off
- .”Recover Messages
If you accidentally deleted a message or even an entire chat history, there is a way to recover the contents. However, you have to secure yourself in advance for this.
WhatsApp can regularly create a backup with all content. Check if you are already using this option. To do this, open the menu and go to the settings. From there, tap on “Chats” and then select “Chat Backup.” Here you can specify how often the content should be backed up, what media you want to back up (images, videos, messages…), and where it should be saved.
If you accidentally deleted a message, you can restore it. It’s quite a hassle to get there, but if the note was necessary, it’s worth the effort. Make sure the last backup was successful. Then uninstall WhatsApp on your phone. If you then reinstall the app again, the application will ask you to restore the old content. If you say yes, all the content from the last backup is back on your phone. However, it is essential to note that any messages you received after the previous backup will no longer exist.
Pin Chat
If you write to Facebook with many contacts, it will quickly become difficult to keep track of the conversations. You can easily pin the chats that are particularly relevant to you to the top and have them ready more quickly. Just press and hold a conversation. On Android, a pin appears at the top of the menu; on iOS, you simply swipe the chat to the right and then pin it. You can do this with a maximum of three conversations.
Find Messages
If you want to find a specific message, the quickest way to do this is to tap on the magnifying glass in the top right corner of the chat overview. Enter a keyword here that you remember. WhatsApp already delivers all messages in which the corresponding word occurs.
Save Messages
If you already know when reading a message that you will need it again later, you can save it. Tap and hold the message. Then tap the star. Your message is now marked. You can find them again by tapping “Starred” under “Settings.”
Mute Individual Contacts
Some contacts are so persistent that you may want to mute them temporarily. On Android, this is how it works: Go to the contact’s profile. You will see a slider that you can use to turn off the notifications. On iOS, swipe left on the chat overview, then tap More. Here you can mute the contact.
“Speed Dial Buttons” For Favorite Contacts
If you write to contact particularly frequently, you can significantly shorten the way to the chat by placing the conversation directly on your smartphone’s home screen. So far, however, this only works for Android and Windows 10 phones. To do this, open the conversation and open the menu. Tap More, then tap Add Shortcut. You already have a chat ready with a tap of your finger.
Quote News
Especially in the case of written conversations that are going on very quickly, it is sometimes unclear to which statement the interlocutor an answer refers to. You can work around the problem by simply quoting the relevant message. To do this, long-press the appropriate message. In the menu that opens, tap the left arrow on Android. On iOS, it is the menu item “Reply.” The selected message will appear immediately above your reply, so it is always clear what you are referring to.
Make Your GIFs
WhatsApp supports sending GIFs and has its selection in the chat. But did you know that you can also create your GIFs that stand out from the crowd? For this, however, a video must be available on your smartphone. To do this, select the video from the gallery and save it as a new GIF. Once you have done that, the clip will appear in WhatsApp’s selection.
WhatsApp’s messenger service, launched in 2009, is not without controversy due to data protection deficiencies. For example, hackers can B. easy to read despite encryption.
So if you no longer want to use the messenger service in the meantime, you can deactivate WhatsApp. To do this, open the settings on your mobile phone and select “Applications” under Apps. Tap WhatsApp from the list.
At the top right is the “Disable” icon. Users can also delete individual contacts from WhatsApp, but be careful; the numbers will also disappear from the phone after that. To delete a communication on WhatsApp, the person must be removed from the address book.