And, suddenly, WhatsApp . Who would have told you just ten years ago that having a smartphone would carry on your shoulders, on many occasions, the responsibility of being always present; willing to respond at any time to friends or coworkers, as if your life, your independence and your time were of no importance.
Or, at least, not as much as it should and certainly as the one I had before. Because, in the end, technology is use: a double-edged sword . Something that allows us to connect with anyone at any time and, practically, in any circumstance; But once it grabs you, as it usually happens with messaging services and social networks, it is difficult for it to let go.
To make the experience less heavy, and you can escape the stares of some other contact without respect for privacy and your time, ABC collects a few tricks that may be useful. Especially in these times of pandemic, in which, for one reason or another, the mobile phone is usually in the palm of our hand much longer than usual. And what to say about what was ten years ago.
So that no one knows that you are “online”
WhatsApp does not have any functionality that allows the user to stop appearing “online” when he is inside the application and wants to consult a message without anyone noticing. However, if we resort to more rudimentary tricks it can be achieved.
The simplest is to connect the airplane mode restricting the connection to the network of our «smartphone». After this, it is possible to enter the application and consult all the chats that you want without risk of being detected by another contact, since the phrase “online” will not appear. Keep in mind, however, that there are other ways to achieve it .
So that no one finds out that you’ve heard it
WhatsApp allows you to remove the double “blue check” from the text messages that the user has read. This can be done easily by going into Settings or Configuration, clicking on Privacy and deactivating the “Read Confirmations” option.
However, for voice messages it does not work. If we do not want someone to know that we have heard an audio that they have sent, we have to select it and forward it to a chat that we have with ourselves, which is something that can be done if the user has their own mobile number saved. There you can listen to it without problem.
So no one can add you to groups …Groups can be useful to organize an event, but having them for having them, and seeing how more than a hundred WhatsApp messages arrive every day that have no clear objective, can become a nuisance.
Among the features that the service has been adding in recent months is limiting the number of contacts that can add you . This can be easily done by going into Settings or Configuration, “Account”, “Privacy” and, finally, “Groups”.
There you can choose between three options ; the first, ” Everyone “, implies that any WhatsApp user can add you to a group; the second, ” My contacts “, limits the possibility to those that you have saved in the agent; finally, ” My contacts, except … ” allows you to select the specific people that you do not want to be added to groups.
So that no one sees that you have left a groupLeaving a group in which you no longer want to be can cause headaches, which is why, when the step is taken, WhatsApp publishes a warning message in the conversation so that other users know. However, there is a way to get that group to stop bothering you without having to leave it permanently .
The first thing to do is remove the notifications from the group. This is achieved by searching the chat and, once inside, clicking on the tab above where the name and photo appear. There you will find the option to “Mute”.
If it is clicked on, the application will stop sending notifications to the user when he receives a new message within the WhatsApp conversation. You can choose to disable them for 8 hours, a week, or a year.
However, this does not mean that the chats disappear completely, so, to complete the operation, the conversation will have to be archived. This option will allow notifications to not go out and will help the user to live more calmly without hearing the noise it generates.
To (try) no one to save your messages.The messages that are sent by WhatsApp, on many occasions, have intimate information that must be treated with care.
And if it can disappear with time, the better. Now the messaging application has added a tool that precisely allows users to schedule the disappearance of messages seven days after they have been sent to a specific user . It cannot be used generically.
To use it, you have to open the messaging application and go to the specific chat where you want to schedule the messages to disappear after seven days. Once there, you have to click on the upper section where the name of the contact appears.
Among the options that are displayed below, such as “Mute”, “Custom ringtone” or “Save to photos”, you will see “Temporary messages”. If you “click” on the option, and select the activation, all chat messages sent from that moment will disappear after seven days.
However, you should keep in mind that the other person will know that you are using the functionality because WhatsApp will notify them through a message on the screen. Also, nothing prevents you from capturing the conversation and saving it if you wish.