Tech

8 Useful WhatsApp Functions That Some S’poreans Might Not Know About Yet

2018-08-06 , 6:02 pm

Last Updated on 2023-04-26 , 10:15 am

We’re tied to WhatsApp for our day-to-day affairs—from gossiping about the new salesgirl to making business appointments with clients. Don’t you just wish that WhatsApp has a function that allows you to selectively receive notifications for only certain group chats?

Wait, it’s actually a function that does exist.

Say what?

Here are eight functions that we’ve not bothered to explore! Of course you might know about them all already, but hey: not everyone is as WhatsApp-Siao as you.

Find out where the hell your friend really is

This is very familiar: your friend says that he’s at Paya Lebar MRT Station and that he’ll be arriving soon to Tampines, but he’s actually at home in Clementi having his breakfast. Get him to share his location with you by tapping on the attachment button, and then on “Location”.

If his GPS is enabled, satellites will tell you whether you’re yet another victim of the “I’m reaching soon” wait.

And well, for boyfriends and husbands…don’t say we never warn you about this hor #communicationiskeytoarelationship

Send a similar message to many people at one go

Sometimes, you just want to remind people about your wedding dinner, but adding them to a group chat will piss some of them off. Why not send a generic message to everyone individually? You know, like BCC-ing everyone about your wedding dinner?

Simply find the broadcast list on your WhatsApp chat box and broadcast it away! Who needs a new group when you can be a loudhailer, right?

Backup your messages

Imagine losing your phone and losing all the romantic messages you’ve sent to your girlfriend or wife. Now, you might not mind, but your girlfriend / wife will.

There’s a Google Drive auto backup, but hey: you want it in your email, coz if your phone dies, your password for your Google Drive might die with it.

Fret not; backup your messages regularly. Simply tap on “Email Conversation” and you’ll receive a chat history via email. Five seconds of work to save yourself six slaps—it’s worth it.

Shortcut to a conversation

If you’ve a partner, you’ll know that 90% of the time, you open WhatsApp just to read and reply to him or her. So why not just create a shortcut on your screen?

It saves one second every time you read or reply a message, and when your partner sees that, he or she will love you more. I think so.

Decrease your data usage by disabling auto-downloading of sent media

Sometimes, in a group, people send images and videos like their data plan is unlimited. And when you receive them, God bless you: You might have just downloaded a 1mb image of a cat that isn’t cute at all.

This is especially useful in a group with people who don’t pay their own bills—they won’t understand how few 2 GB data is. To disable auto-downloading, just go to settings and make sure downloads only occur with Wi-fi connection. Then go to your school and download all those not-cute cat images.

Change your privacy settings

Imagine being added into a group whereby everyone is merely interested to sell the latest insurance policy to you. You can stop strangers from seeing your profile photo by allowing only your contacts to see it.

Simply go to settings and change privacy options. You do know by now, that you can turn off the “Last seen…” thingy, right? I know what you’re thinking: Unfortunately, unless you’re using WeChat, you can’t mask your number.

For WhatsApp, you can decide whether to get notifications, and even select those that matter the most. You can mute certain groups and assign unique notification sounds for some groups. Just go to Group Info and mute if you want, or custom notifications if that is your preference.

Suggestion? Mute work group after working hours, and mute friends groups during working hours.

Turning off the double-blue ticks

Do you dread the double-blue tick? If so, you can actually disable it – much like how you could disable your “last seen”. But do note the consequences when you turn this off: people might just think that you’ve not read their message and WhatsApp call you instead.

I mean, when you turn off the double-blue ticks, your goal is to stay away from certain people, right?