With over 5 billion downloads, WhatsApp has become one the most prominent app in the world. I will not be wrong if I regard it as a necessity in our day to day life. We all have grown up experiencing different updates. WhatsApp is a text, video and voice messaging app with a lot more features now that was launched in 2009. Since then, it has become incredibly popular and now it is the most popular messaging app in the world. It was founded by two Ex-Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009. After they had left Yahoo, they applied for job in Facebook and were rejected.

Talking about the release of WhatsApp in India, it was released in mid-2010 and in no time India has the largest number of active users which is more than 400 million.

Here is an interesting fact about this app. Being the most popular app, it has been banned in certain countries. 

Majority of you reading this may be aware of the fact that on February 19, 2014, the popular social networking website “Facebook” finally acquired WhatsApp. Facebook spend $19 billion and that day WhatsApp became the biggest purchase of the Facebook company.

WhatsApp Net Worth Exceeded the worth of NASA. This amount that was charged for WhatsApp acquisition was higher because at that time, NASA was worth $17 billion, while WhatsApp was sold for $19 billion.

You should also know that WhatsApp has a lot of features, not many are aware about! So , here I present you the amazing tips and tricks that will surely help you discover your app a little closer.

Top 10 tricks and tips of Whatsapp

Let’s deep dive into some of the rarest tips and tricks of WhatsApp that will make you stand a little unique! Note that all these tips and tricks work just fine and there is no requirement of 3rd party applications or rooting your device!

1. Voice Message does not go well with Read Receipts

We all know if we turn off the read receipts, WhatsApp Blue ticks are disabled but you can try a simple trick that will reveal if your messages were read or not.

Send your contact a voice message. Even a one second one voice message will work. If they play that voice note, the ticks will turn blue. 

2. Hide Media in your gallery from Specific Chat or Group

This feature of hiding media from individual contacts or group chats can be configured in the following manner:

Select and open the chat that you want to change media visibility for.

• Select Menu > View Contact. 
• Tap on media visibility.
• “Do you want to show newly downloaded media from this chat in your phone’s gallery” prompt is displayed.
• Select No
• Select OK to complete the process

3. Pre hear you voice message before sending it to anyone.

The easiest way you could do this is by turning off your internet but this might be the easisest but not the coolest.

There is always a coolest way around, Follow the steps:

• Long tap the mic button and swipe up to lock the icon.
• You will see your audio being recorded.
• When you finish off recording your voice, just tap the back button and you will come out of the chat.
• Go back into the chat; you will see your voice message saved in a similar way as an email draft!
• Tap the play button if it works fine, send it else tap delete (the dustbin button)

4. Inbuilt Fingerprint lock and Two step verification to open WhatsApp

Recently, WhatsApp has come out with a new feature in its app. This feature allows users unlock their app using the fingerprint sensors of their smartphones.

Follow the steps to Enable fingerprint lock

• Open WhatsApp > tap More options  > Settings > Account > Privacy.
• Scroll to the bottom and tap on the Fingerprint lock.
• Turn on Unlock with fingerprint.
• Touch the fingerprint sensor to confirm your fingerprint.
• You can select the amount of time before fingerprint authentication is prompted.
  • Turn on Show content in notifications if you’d like to preview message text inside new message notifications.

You can also add 2 step verification process as:

• 1. Go to Settings>Account
• 2. Tap on Two-Step Verification for added security
• 3. Tap on enable and create a pin>Next>confirm your pin>Next
• 4. Provide your email which will be used to reset your pin in case you forget it. You can also tap Skip!
• 5.The settings will be applied and you are ready to go.

5. Read receipts also works on Status!

Conventionally, when you visit your WhatsApp’s Status area and tap on the status update of your contacts, they get to know that you have seen the status. But what if you want to keep it a secret and not let your contact know that you have seen their status.

Here’s a tip: Keep the read receipts off until the status has gone inactive after 24hrs or the other person has deleted it.

But remember disabling the read receipts will also won’t let you know the names of the people who viewed your status. But who cares, if you want to keep your little work going on!

6. Download status without 3rd party apps

Follow the given procedure to save any status on WhatsApp. 

a. Watch the status you want to save or download.

b. Open File Explorer in your device.

v. Open “menu” and enable ‘show hidden folder’

d. Open WhatsApp folder and inside this open media folder.

e. In the media folder you will see a faded folder, ‘. Statuses’ open it.

f. Now copy any picture/image you want then paste it to your desired folder.

7. Message anyone without saving their WhatsApp numbers

This is actually very useful if you want to send any message to a contact whose contact is not in your phone.

a. Open the web browser and paste ‘https://api.WhatsApp.com/send?phone=number’ in the Address bar of your phone’s browser. 

for eg, if the number is from India, its country code will be +91, you will have to type ‘https://api.WhatsApp.com/send?phone=91XXXXXXXXXX’ 

But you need to make sure this number is available for WhatsApp!

Rest is all a step wise procedure, tap on ‘Continue to chat’ / ‘Message’

8. Prevent yourself from being added to any group!

 Sometimes, this automatic addition to unknown groups is quite annoying and irritating and by the time you delete and exit the group your contact details such as your mobile number has been exposed to everyone already present in the group.

Now following the below steps, you can control who can add you to any group.

a. Go into WhatsApp settings.

b. Tap on Account >Privacy > Groups

c. Now you can select   ‘Everyone’ / ‘My Contacts’ / ‘My Contacts except’ 

You may be familiar to this thing as this is similar like preventing people to see your WhatsApp status!

9. Find out who’s and what is making your storage full

Now from the past 5 years or so, Android phones have a data usage tracker, that gives you information of data usage. But WhatsApp has its own tracker, giving you a category-by-category look at data usage.

To view the WhatsApp’s data usage, you’ll need to 

1. open Settings > Data and storage usage

2. You see two options to select 

 a) Select Network usage.

     you will see data usage related to WhatsApp calls, Media, Google Drive, Messages, Status and roaming and overall usage.

     you can also reset these statistics, tap Reset Statistics in the bottom of your screen, and tap reset.

 b) Select Storage usage 

    This feature allows you to view a ranking of storage used by contact. This is ranked by which contact or group uses the most storage on your phone.

    Simply tap on a contact/group and you’ll see statistics related to photos, messages, stickers, documents GIFs, videos, and more.

You can free up space by touching the free space button and select the items that you want to delete. Tap delete (and it will also display the size of data that is to be deleted)

10. IOS || Broadcast private messages to multiple contacts

With this feature of broadcasting, you  can send a message to several of your contacts at once. The IOS users can create a brodacast list in the following manner:

• Open WhatsApp.
• Tap Broadcast Lists at the top of the Chats screen.
• Tap New List at the bottom of the Broadcast Lists screen.
• Search for or select the contacts you want to add.
• Tap Create.

You can also edit and delete your broadcast list

To edit the list:

a. Open your Broadcast Lists.

b. Tap the “i” icon next to the list you want to edit.

c. In the List Info screen, you can:

i. You can change the name of your broadcast list.

ii. You can add or remove recipients from the list by tapping Edit list.

To delete any list, you can tap Edit, then the “–” icon (next to the list you want to delete) > Delete.

Share your favourite WhatsApp trick! Let us know in the comments.