WhatsApp, for better or worse, is probably the creator of your social life.
Without it how would you sort out pub trips, holidays and communal house bills?
With now over a billion users on the growing network, many hacks have arisen. We’re always looking for ways to make our WhatsApp lives just a bit easier.
But wouldn’t it be good to have the most useful ones in one place?
Well, here we present the ultimate guide to all the best hacks. You’ll never be afraid of blue ticks ever again.
1) Find out who your best friend is
It’s not the years you’ve known someone, or if they know your gravest secrets that makes a person your best friend.
It’s how much you WhatsApp them obviously.
And there’s a hack to figure out exactly who that is for you.
Go to settings in WhatsApp, and then account. You’ll get a screen like this, where you then need to tap Storage Usage:
2) Recover your deleted messages
So this one involves a little forward planning, which isn’t always feasible.
You might not always know when you’re going to accidentally delete the conversation you were having with a cute date, therefore losing their number forever. If you hadn’t put it in your phone already that is.
But there’s a way you can prepare for this. Go into settings and tap Chats. In there is the option to back up chat history now, or even set up an auto-back up.
If you have an iPhone, it will store your chats in the cloud.
You can then fully restore your chat history and media by reinstalling WhatsApp. Huzzah.
2) Recover your deleted messages
So this one involves a little forward planning, which isn’t always feasible.
You might not always know when you’re going to accidentally delete the conversation you were having with a cute date, therefore losing their number forever. If you hadn’t put it in your phone already that is.
But there’s a way you can prepare for this. Go into settings and tap Chats. In there is the option to back up chat history now, or even set up an auto-back up.
If you have an iPhone, it will store your chats in the cloud.
You can then fully restore your chat history and media by reinstalling WhatsApp. Huzzah.
5) Stop people from seeing when you were last online
This feature definitely takes the prize as the creepiest part of messaging apps.
The ‘last seen’ or ‘last online’ function of the likes of Facebook and WhatsApp means you’re giving away pretty personal information about your day-to-day life. Like when you go to sleep, for example.
It doesn’t have to be that way though when you’re using WhatsApp.
Simply go into your Privacy settings, tap Last Seen and you can customise who can see when you were last online.
You can make it so only certain people can see it, or just cut all the hassle and let nobody in.
Not one person.
5) Stop people from seeing when you were last online
This feature definitely takes the prize as the creepiest part of messaging apps.
The ‘last seen’ or ‘last online’ function of the likes of Facebook and WhatsApp means you’re giving away pretty personal information about your day-to-day life. Like when you go to sleep, for example.
It doesn’t have to be that way though when you’re using WhatsApp.
Simply go into your Privacy settings, tap Last Seen and you can customise who can see when you were last online.
You can make it so only certain people can see it, or just cut all the hassle and let nobody in.
Not one person.
6) Really make your point with emphasis in bold or italics
WhatsApp has fulfilled the dreams of sarcasm and irony fans everywhere with this latest update.
Now you can convey to your mates how you couldn’t be anymore excited about that boring family dinner. Really, can’t wait…
Simply type your text in between the following symbols:
7) Send a document
The end of clunky email attachments are almost nigh with this new WhatsApp feature.
The option to send over files is situated near the other sharing options. Tap the attachment or arrow icon (depending if you’re on Android or IOS), and then press the ‘Document’ or ‘Share Document’ icon.
At the moment you can only send over PDFs. But it could only be the beginning.
8) Stop WhatsApp from clogging up your phone’s memory
Is the most annoying part of your day trying to take a selfie and getting that dreaded ‘Cannot Take Photo’ message?
If so, you can save a lot of room by not allowing WhatsApp to automatically download any media into your Photos.