WhatsApp Messenger tips and tricks

WhatsApp Messenger is one of the most popular mobile apps. Lewis Painter showcases some of its lesser-known features

1. Add formatting to messages

After many years of plain text support, WhatsApp has finally rolled out formatting support, enabling WhatsApp-ers to add bold, italicised and strikethrough formatting options to their messages. Once users are running version 2.12.535 on Android, it’s easy to do. Simply open a chat and follow these instructions:

Bold: Add asterisks to either side of the text (*bold*) Italics: Add underscores to either side of the text (_italics_)

Strikethrough: Add tildes either side of the text (~tilde~)

2. Hide ‘Last Seen’ timestamp

Unless you disable the feature, WhatsApp will display to all your friends when you were last online – making those awkward messages that little bit harder to avoid. Don’t worry as there is a way to disable the timestamp and disappear into the shadows, although the catch is that you won’t be able to see when any of your friends were last online. It’s only fair, right?

Go to the Settings menu, then tap > Account > Privacy > Last Seen Timestamp and make sure ’Nobody’ is selected. You should then be free to access WhatsApp without others seeing when you were last online.

3. Disable Read Receipts

Just like with the ‘Last Seen’ timestamp, WhatsApp will also let your friends know when you’ve read their messages, and just like the timestamp feature, this too can be disabled. It’s worth noting that disabling the feature will mean that you won’t know if/when messages you’ve sent have been read by the recipient, and group message read receipts will still be sent regardless.

Head to the Settings menu, tap Account > Privacy and toggle the ‘Read Receipts’ option off.

4. Backup and restore WhatsApp conversations

For some time now, WhatsApp has offered the functionality to back up all your chats and media

in case you change (or loose) your smartphone. This is automatically done once every few days/every week in most cases, but you can also make a manual backup if need be.

To manually back up your messages, go to Settings > Chats > Chat Backup and tap ‘Back Up’ to create a backup via WhatsApp servers, or log in with your Google account and backup via Google Drive.

To restore chats directly from a backup for whatever reason, simply uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp. When you open the app after the reinstall, you should be prompted to restore your most recent backup.

5. Mute annoying Group Chats

It has been five or so years since you left university, and your mates thought it’d be a good idea to create a group chat with (what feels like) 15 million people constantly sending messages. We’ve all been there, right? The good news is that you can mute the inane chatter for eight hours, a week or even a year if you’ve got no plans to join in with the ‘banter’.

It’s an easy thing to do to, simply open the annoying group chat, tap the name of the chat at the top of the app, tap ‘Mute’ and select the duration of the mute.