Whatsapp has over a billion users at the moment, which is almost 1 in 7 people on the entire planet. Out of everyone who uses Whatsapp on a regular basis, only a fraction actually use it to it’s full potential. Just like how many smartphone users only use a fraction of their phone’s data allowance. Whatsapp actually had quite a few features, that many people don’t use simply because they do not know about them. So here are some features that we think are worth knowing about. How many of them do you use?

Disabling the Blue Ticks

One of the great (and equally frustrating features) of Whatsapp is the two blue ticks. When you send someone a message, a tick will show when it is sent. There will be another tick once received, and then the ticks will turn blue once the recipient had read the message. This is great for knowing whether the recipient has read your message, but it’s annoying when you don’t want to reply straight away. Fortunately, there’s a way to disable the blue ticks, otherwise known as read receipts. Simply go to Settings > Account and then turn off read receipts. The only disadvantage of this is that you will no longer receive read receipts from other people either.

There is also a sneaky way to read messages without the sender knowing. Simply put your phone in airplane mode before reading the message, and close Whatsapp fully before disabling airplane mode. Don’t tell your mother that you learned how to ignore her on this blog though.

Find out who your Friends are

It’s 2018, so we don’t need to think about who our friends are anymore. We can simply let our phones tell us. Friendship is no longer measured in memories and loyalty, instead it’s all about how much data we spend on each other. To find out who your real friends are, go to Settings > Data and Storage usage > Storage Usage and you will be presented with a list of your most important groups and contacts ranked by how much data you’ve used on them. You can also use this feature to mass delete media that’s taking up too much space on your phone.

See When your Messages were Read

We all know about the blue ticks (see above). But did you know that you can find out what time the recipient read your messages? If you’re using an Android phone, tap and hold on a message that you’ve sent. On a phone with iOS, swipe left on the message. Your screen will then show who the message has been delivered to, who’s read it and at what time they read it. Stalking just got a whole lot easier.

Hide your Profile Pic

In a world where privacy is extremely limited, at least there is a way to get a bit of privacy from Whatsapp (besides not using it all of course). You can keep yourself to yourself and choose who sees your profile picture by going to Settings > Account > Privacy > Profile Photo.

Mute Group Chats

Probably one of the best features on Whatsapp is the fact that you can mute group chats. We all love a group chat among friends or family. But when there are multiple people chatting, there are multiple notifications pinging. This is very annoying if you’re busy or are waiting for a more important notification. Just open the chat, click on the name of the chat and you’ll have the option to mute for 8 hours, a week or a year.

Send your Location

If you’re trying to give directions to someone via Whatsapp and it’s just not working, you can sent them a drop pin via Whatsapp and they will then be able to use their Maps app to find you. You can also send them a pin of where you’re heading to, so you don’t have to be in the physical place. You can also use the ‘Live Location’ feature to let them track your movements en route. The Live Location feature will broadcast your location for 15 minutes, 1 hour or 8 hours and you can end it at any time.

Go Under the Radar

Sometimes you just don’t want to reply to people’s messages. While that’s fine, sometimes people just won’t let you get away with it. If people can see when you were last online then there’s no way of getting away with it, so luckily there’s a way to disable the Whatsapp ‘Last Seen’ feature. Go to Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen and disable it to begin ignoring people at your leisure.

Send Voice Messages

You may already know that voice search and other voice-activated apps are becoming increasingly popular. Whatsapp is bang up-to-date with this trend, allowing you to send messages with just your voice. Thanks to Siri and Google Assistant (depending on whether your phone has the iOS or Android operating system), you can now chat away when you’re driving, eating or whatever. Just enable your virtual assistant and say “Hey Siri” or “OK Google”. Then say “Send a Whatsapp to” and the name of the recipient. You can then begin dictating the message, allowing you to keep your hands free for something even more important.

Select your Notifications

Not all Whatsapp conversations warrant checking your phone every time it pings. This means it can get annoying when you hear your phone notification tone and it’s just another picture of the snow that someone has in their garden. Fortunately, you can assign different tones to different groups or contacts on Whatsapp, meaning you know whether it’s worth looking at or ignoring as soon as your phone makes a noise.

Whatsapp Backup

We send a lot of photos and videos through Whatsapp, and some of these are very important to us. You will therefore want to back them up somehow. Worry not, because Whatsapp already does that for you.  Whatsapp automatically backs up conversations to iCloud if you have a phone with an iOS operating system, or Google Drive if you’re using a phone with the Android operating system.