As one of the most popular messaging apps with over 2 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp is almost everywhere in our daily lives. Here are some tips that you might not know about to enhance your chatting experience and let you enjoy communicating with your friends.
In the new “View Once” mode, images and videos can only be viewed once before being automatically deleted. The new mode is very useful when sending sensitive information like Wifi name and passwords. To send a view-once photo or video, just tap the paperclip icon, then select the photo or video you want to send, and tap on the 1 icon in the text bar, send and done!
However, please note that the recipient can still take a quick screenshot or a screen recording of the message.
Tired of the default WhatsApp chat background? You can change it to your favorite picture or select another one from a number of images provided by WhatsApp itself. Go to Settings > Chats > Chat Wallpaper > Choose Wallpaper Library, and then you can choose Solid Colours, Gallery, Default or No Wallpaper.
The blue tick next to each message shows when the message is sent through and read, but sometimes it can be troublesome when you don’t reply to someone instantly and he or she sees you have read their messages. To hide the blue ticks, you can turn off your read receipts. Go to Settings > Account > Privacy, and toggle off or untick “Read Receipts”. Then both you and the sender won’t get the blue ticks.
Italics: Add the underscore signs on both sides of your text to make it italics
Bold: Add the star key on both sides of the text
Strikethrough: Add twiddles to either side of the text for strikethrough
If you want to send a voice message in WhatsApp, you have to hold down the mic button and keep it until you’ve done. But what if you have to send a very long voice message or need to use both of your hands for something else while recording? By locking the mic, you can now record voice messages in a hands-free mode. Go to Chats > Specific chat > Tap the mic on the right of the text box > Press and hold the mic > Swipe up to the lock symbol. When you’ve done recording, just click on the blue send-button to send your message!
The “Fast Playback” feature enables you to increase the playback speed of voice messages, which will help you listen to longer messages quicker. You can select the speed from the default 1x setting to 1.5x or 2x speed, and it won’t change the pitch of the person’s voice. Just play a voice message and tap on the “1x” on the right to change it to “1.5x”. Tap on it again to change to 2x, and one more tap will bring it back to the default 1x speed.
If you are in too many groups which you seldom look at but will check once in a while, the archive chat feature allows you to hide an individual or group chat from your chats list without deleting it to better organize your conversations. To archive your chats, tap and hold the chat you want to hide, then tap the Archive icon on the top of the screen. Once you archive the chat, it merely hides it from the main view, and you can still receive messages from it and get notified. To unarchive it again, scroll to the bottom of the Chats screen and tap Archived. Select the chat you want to unarchive and tap the Unarchive icon on the top bar. Then the chat will appear again in the main view.
