WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in most parts of the world, and in my decade or so of using it, I’ve learned a few important tips that make it a much more convenient and secure experience. I use the following WhatsApp hacks to keep my account safe, stop the app from overloading my notifications and storage, and save myself a lot of time. If you’re like me, and your entire social circle is on WhatsApp, then you’re absolutely going to need tips like these to stop from feeling overwhelmed.
Use advanced chat privacy to block exports and Meta AI
WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption, which means that the company itself cannot read the contents of your messages, but that doesn’t stop recipients from easily exporting your conversations. If you don’t want anyone to export your message history, make sure to enable Advanced Chat Privacy in WhatsApp. This feature needs to be enabled individually for each chat (including group chats).
With Advanced Chat Privacy enabled, photos won’t be automatically saved to recipients’ phones, AI features will be disabled, and no one will be able to export that chat’s history to their devices. Note that people can still forward your messages and take screenshots or screen recordings of them, but every little bit helps. You can enable Advanced Chat Privacy by opening any chat in WhatsApp, tapping the name of the contact or group, and going to Advanced Chat Privacy.
You can lock individual chats, too
Everyone knows that you can put an app lock on WhatsApp, which means that you’ll need a passcode (or biometric authentication) to view your messages whenever you open the app. A lesser known feature is that you can lock individual chats, too. This allows you to put chats with certain people or groups into a hidden folder. These hidden chats won’t show up in your list of WhatsApp conversations and can only be found by searching for the name of the contact or group. Even if someone else gains access to your WhatsApp, they also won’t be able to open these chats without an additional passcode or biometric authentication.
To use this, open any chat in WhatsApp, tap the name of the contact or group, and enable Lock chat.
Make your WhatsApp account more secure
Credit: Pranay Parab
There are a few easy steps you can take in the WhatsApp settings to reduce the chances of unauthorized access to your WhatsApp account. Get started by going to WhatsApp Settings > Account. First, tap on Two-step verification and enable it. WhatsApp will ask you to create a 6-digit PIN, and the next time you log in to the app on a different device, you’ll be prompted to enter this PIN in addition to your other credentials.
When you set up two-step verification, the app will also ask you to add an email address to help recover the PIN in case you forget it. Once you’ve done that, feel free to add a passkey via the same account settings page, if you wish. The final step in securing your WhatsApp account involves locking your SIM card. Go to your phone’s cellular service settings and set up a SIM PIN there. This locks your SIM card or eSIM, and means that if someone tries to add your number to another device, they’ll need this PIN to get in. Since WhatsApp requires your phone number for activation, this step could prevent unauthorized access to your account.
Optionally, you can also add a password to your WhatsApp backups. Go to WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Chat backup > End-to-end encryption. You can either set up a passkey or a password to encrypt your backups. No one will be able to access your WhatsApp backups without this password, which will help keep your extra copies of important messages secure.
Stop unknown people from adding you to groups
As a heavy WhatsApp user, one of the biggest annoyances I used to face was people adding me to WhatsApp groups without my permission. I wasn’t too bothered when my friends did this, but eventually I started getting added to random spam groups by strangers, which is when I decided to put an end to it. You can keep strangers from adding you to WhatsApp groups by going to WhatsApp Settings > Privacy > Groups and selecting My contacts. This allows only saved contacts to add you to groups. Feel free to choose My contacts except… if you want to block specific people from adding you to groups.
The best WhatsApp hack for sending voice notes
If you like sending voice notes on WhatsApp, then I’ve got a few quick tips for you that will make your life easier. You might know that you can open any chat and hold the microphone icon to send a voice note. But did you know that if you slide this icon upwards towards the lock icon, you can let go of it and keep recording? This way, you don’t have to keep holding the mic icon while recording long voice notes. You can also hit the pause button to pause the recording and come back to it later, in case there’s an interruption while you’re recording a voice note. Once you’re done recording, you can also press the 1 button if you want your voice note to be deleted after the recipient hears it once.
I’ll admit, though, that I sometimes tend to ignore long voice notes. Instead, I use transcripts to quickly skim through them, and decide if they need an immediate response. Voice note transcripts are disabled by default, but you can enable them by going to WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Voice message transcripts > Manually. While you’re here, also tap Transcript language and select the language that you want to see your transcripts in.
Archive unwanted chats and groups
If you’re getting too many messages from certain WhatsApp chats or groups, they’ll always show up at the top in the list of your chats. To get these off the main window, head to the chat list and press and hold on the chats you want to banish. Then tap Mute. To ensure that these archived chats don’t reappear in the main window when you receive a new message from them, go to WhatsApp Settings > Chats and enable Keep chats archived.
Reduce notification spam
Credit: Pranay Parab
It’s really easy to get overwhelmed by notifications in WhatsApp. If you’re an even moderately social person, you’ll quickly find yourself receiving way more messages than you can reasonably be expected to handle. I’ve found that disabling WhatsApp notifications entirely works best to counter the problem, but that’s not the best solution for everyone.
Instead, you can try a few things to seriously reduce the amount of pings you get from WhatsApp. Go to WhatsApp Settings > Notifications and review every setting on this page. Personally, I’ve disabled all notifications for emoji reactions, group messages, and reminders. This way, I only get notified when individuals message me.
Create chat folders to manage message overload
WhatsApp’s chat folders are a great way to triage your conversations. In your chat list, press and hold on any conversation. From there, you can select either Add to Favorites or Add to list to get started. The first option adds these messages to the Favorites folder, and the second one lets you choose a custom folder name. These chat folders will appear above all your conversations, and you can quickly tap any of them to focus on specific conversations.
The real hack is to reorder these folders to your liking. You can do that by holding the name on any of these chat folders and selecting Reorder lists. I’ve used this to prioritize messages from loved ones, my meditation group, running friends, and so on.
How to stop “WhatsApp storage full” errors
Unfortunately, I know too many people whose phone storage is almost full because of WhatsApp. If you’re in this situation, go to WhatsApp Settings > Storage and data > Manage storage to start the cleanup. Tap Larger than 5 MB and you’ll be able to review everything that takes up a lot of storage space on your device. In the bottom-left corner, there’s a button that lets you sort these files by recency or storage size. I’ve used this to identify lots of duplicate files and delete all but one copy of such items. You can also see a list of the chats occupying the most storage space on your device. Tap each item to manually review your files.
It’s pretty easy to set up a few preventative measures to stop this error, too. You can go to WhatsApp Settings > Storage and data and turn off everything under Media auto-download.
Double check settings and privacy
It’s important to note that if you use WhatsApp’s apps on both your desktop and your phone, any settings changes you’ve made on one device might not sync to the other. You should review all settings to see if everything is syncing correctly.
While you’re double checking account details, you should also review your WhatsApp privacy settings. Go to WhatsApp Settings > Privacy, scroll to the bottom and select Privacy checkup for a quick overview. This is a step-by-step guide to enabling the most important privacy settings in WhatsApp, and is much faster than doing it manually.