The text message is dead! And in its place, long live the more popular, more flexible, more user-friendly – and now entirely free – WhatsApp. With the annual fee having long since been knocked on the head and video calling having finally landed alongside better video viewing, there's now nothing standing between you and endless chats. That means it's time to progress beyond the basics and learn to become a WhatsApp wizard.
From dodging awkward messages without the guilt to keeping the adult stuff private, here are the WhatsApp tips and tricks that will turn you into a messaging master.
1. Hide the fact that you're ignoring someone
Disabling those giveaway double blue ticks (Settings > Account > Privacy > Read Receipts) is a great way to avoid the 'I know you've read it' message rebuttals when opting to ignore someone. Turn them off all the time, however, and suspicion might start to grow.
And yet you can hide that you've read messages on an individual basis. Before you open the questionable chat, switch your phone to airplane mode. You can now read away with no alert being sent. Now exit the message before you turn airplane mode off again, and it will remain unread - well, in the sender's eyes at least. Cue evil laugh.
2. Enjoy guilt-free message dodging by hiding your 'last seen' time
WhatsApp's double blue ticks are a backstabbing homing beacon for social snubbing. However, they're not the only notifier out to show up your message-dodging deceit. Your 'last seen' time is a second layer of unwanted attention when you're desperately trying to avoid an awkward conversation.
You can turn it off though. By heading to Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen, you can decide who, if anyone, you want to see when you've last been active. Finally, guilt-free ignoring is possible.
3. Magically recover deleted messages
*Smiles*, *brags*, *accidentally presses delete* ...and as simple as that, the number of that pretty girl/ guy is gone. All is not lost, though, for there is a way to bring back messages from the dead. You're going to have to pre-empt your message deleting misfortunes here a little bit though.
If you've set up daily backup for your favoured chats (see tip #11), WhatsApp will, in the wee hours of the morning, save that day's messages to the cloud. Now, if you accidentally delete messages or entire chats, you can simply recover the lost content with Harry Potter-levels of wizardry by reinstalling the app. Phone numberious, returnerum!
4. Quote your friends to prove them wrong
Instead of scrolling back through hundreds of rambling messages, taking a screenshot of the proof that your pal said they'd arrive two hours ago, then cropping it and sending it back – you can now simply quote them.
Sure, you'll still have to give your thumb a sizeable workout by scrolling back to the message you want, but once you have it, you can simply hold down on it, then hit the left arrow on Android or the 'reply' button on iOS to deliver your WhatsApp mic drop. This feature will handily link them back to that message if they need added context as well.
5. Throw in some bold and italics to get your point across
WhatsApp is great for most things. Sensing tone isn't always one of them though. Fortunately there's a hidden little feature to help you better get your point across and help your friends understand the urgency of your messages. You can add bold, italics, and even strikethrough.
How? Well, sadly it's not as easy as simply clicking the corresponding button. Instead, every time you want to put a bit of emphasis on a certain word, you'll have to put the desired command shortcut around the words you want to stand out. To bold up, you need to but an asterisk on either side of the word, like *this*, while italics need an underscore on either side of a _word_, and strikethrough a tildes (those squiggly hyphens), just like ~this~. Feeling jazzy? You can even combine commands for *_bolditalics_* attention grabbing.
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