WhatsApp features you may not be aware of

WhatsApp recently hit the 2 billion userbase worldwide. WhatsApp continues to be the most popular and widely used messaging app. WhatsApp regularly rolls out new features and tests multiple ones as well. But there are some features that have been there on WhatsApp for years now but not all users are aware of it.

These WhatsApp features are easy to use and can make your WhatsApp experience even better. These features can also be considered as WhatsApp tips and tricks. We take a look at some of these lesser known WhatsApp features.

Saving data

WhatsApp is optimised for low specced phones and low data as well. But sharing media can lead to heavy data consumption. Users can choose to save data by disabling automatic downloads for photos and videos. This can be found under 'Data and storage usage' in the settings menu.

Users can choose to disable auto download on mobile data, Wi-Fi and roaming as well. WhatsApp also lets users choose file types like photo, audio, video and document. Another way to save data is enabling low data usage for voice calls on WhatsApp.

Reply privately in group chats

If there's a certain message in the WhatsApp group chat to which users wish to reply privately, there's a way. You can simply long press on that particular message, tap on the 3 dotted icon and select 'reply privately'. This will open a private chat between the two of you.

Blue tick

Blue ticks on WhatsApp indicate that the message has been read by the user. But WhatsApp lets users hide the blue tick to hide the fact that the message has already been read. There is one trick though to find out to bypass this feature. You can simply send a voice message and when the user opens it, the blue tick will appear.

Change phone number

No, you don't need to create a new WhatsApp account if you've changed your phone number. You can move your existing WhatsApp account to the new number. This feature is available in Settings > Account > Change number. Once the number is changed, your contacts will be updated about this. So you don't have to send messages to all your contacts saying you've changed your number.

Hide message details

This feature is exclusive for iPhones and it lets users hide the content of the message in the notification screen. Users will be notified of the WhatsApp message along with the contact's name but the content will be hidden. This can be done through the notification settings on WhatsApp and on the iPhone as well.