Everyone today uses Whatsapp, but only a few know how to use every function it includes. Becoming an expert on Whatsapp means not only making the most of its internal communication tools, but also wasting less time chatting, perhaps writing the same message to more people or explaining in words where we are. If in another article I had written about the hidden tricks and secrets of Whatsapp on Android and iPhone, this time we do instead a summary of its native functions, options and possibilities, to be experts of this application no longer just of messages .
READ ALSO: 10 New tricks and functions of Whatapp
1) Chat from PC and reply to messages
WhatsApp now has a website from which to chat as if using the smartphone. The problem is that the site only works if you have an Android smartphone (it does not work if you have an iPhone) and if your mobile phone is connected to the internet online.
In fact, the Whatsapp chat via web from a PC is only an interface dependent on the application that is in the phone.
In addition to the web interface, as explained in another article, it is possible to reply to Whatsapp messages from a PC, from the notification that can be displayed on the screen, even without activating and using Whatsapp via the website.
2) Know the time when a message was read and delivered
Next to each message we send is the time we sent it. However, this time may be different from logging and reading. Delivery would be the moment when this message arrives on the recipient's mobile phone and reading is when it is actually opened and read. Then touch our message by holding on Android or swiping left on iPhone to know the time of delivery and read.
READ ALSO: WhatsApp seen and read if the double blue sign appears
3) Disable the display for others of the date of the last time we used Whatsapp online
A function to know if you do not want to let others know when we last used Whatsapp and thus maintain a minimum of privacy is to choose whether to show the last access to everyone, only to contacts or to anyone.
Go to the application menu, in the Settings tab and then go to Account -> Privacy to find the option.
In this same screen you can disable the reading confirmation of Whatsapp and choose who can see our profile photo and status.
4) Send the same message to multiple people
Whatsapp experts, instead of copying and pasting and opening different chats with various people, Whatsapp has a little known but very intelligent function called Broadcast .
From the main menu button at the top right you can then create a new broadcast, choose the people to include and then chat so that what we write is received by everyone while what other people reply to us is received only by us and not also from other people included in the broadcast.
READ ALSO: Whatsapp and Broadcast groups: notifications, chat options and help
5) Silent group chat
One of the best features in the WhatsApp arsenal is group messaging which can also include 100 people together writing at the same time. It is obvious, however, that in a crowded group chat, receiving a notification every time someone writes becomes absurd. For this reason you can make sure that it is silent and does not make notifications appear on the phone. From group chat, press the options button and then put on Silent . Notifications can be blocked for eight hours, a week or a whole year. On Android, you can choose to continue receiving notifications in the top bar, without sound.
6) Send chats via email
If you want to keep a chat or send a conversation to someone, you can do it on Android by tapping the options button and then tapping on Other and iPhone by tapping the bar at the top of a conversation window. The email will include both the Emoji and any multimedia files and photos attached. In both cases, the default e-mail client opens with a message already prepared.
7) Add a conversation to the home screen (on Android only).
To quickly access the most frequent conversations, open one, then press the menu at the top right, go to Other and then touch Add link. An icon with the name of the contact or group and its image will appear on the Android home screen.
Do not forget that there are also three Whatsapp widgets to read the conversation without opening Whatsapp.
8) Share the location
One of the most useful functions of Whatsapp is that you can easily tell a friend where we are in the chat, sending him our precise location via GPS or choosing from several suggested places or selecting a point on the map. On Android just press the attachment button (the black paperclip) and choose the Location while on the iPhone you have to touch the Share button at the bottom left.
9) Forward messages and pictures to other friends
As in the best email clients, WhatsApp includes a forwarding function to share a funny joke or a photo received with someone else within the same application, on another chat. On an Android smartphone, press and hold on the message to be shared, tap if you want other messages by selecting them, then tap on the Next button at the top right and choose a new contact from the list.
On iOS the process is a little more complicated: long press on a chat message, go to the standard iOS sharing menu and choose Whatsapp. On both Android and iPhone you can select multiple lines of text and images.
10) Save images, photos, videos and audio messages on memory
On iOS everything that is received in WhatsApp is automatically saved in the phone's Camera Roll and, from there, to all the other synchronized photo services such as Dropbox or iCloud. If you don't want this to happen, you can disable it in the settings under Chat Settings. On Android this option is missing because the photos and videos received are saved in a separate folder from the main Gallery. From the Chat settings you can block the automatic download of multimedia files in order to save bandwidth and battery.
11) Backup and transfer of the chat
On Android, WhatsApp chats are automatically saved on the device every day. On iOS, you can instead connect Whatsapp to iCloud to save conversations automatically.
We talked about these procedures in the article on how to recover deleted Whatsapp messages and history
12) A single contact can be silenced so that every message received is not signaled by the phone and a personalized ringtone can also be set.
These are some of the news with August 2015 of Whatsapp (with middle finger between the emoticons)
13) Mark messages read or unread
If you don't have time to reply to a message, in order not to forget to read it again, you can mark it as unread, exactly as it happens with emails. From the chat window, press and hold on a conversation to bring up the menu containing the " Mark as unread " option.
If, on the other hand, you receive many unread messages, perhaps from a group, to avoid scrolling everything you can touch and hold to mark everything as read, without opening the chat. Note that these changes do not affect the notifications with blue ticks of those who wrote us, but only affect their phone. The Mark as read / unread options are also available on WhatsApp Web.
14) Personalized notifications for people and groups
If, as normal, you have more important contacts than others, you can set a different notification ringtone for messages received from them. Open a chat and tap the title bar to find the option to set a different custom notification sound. In addition to the sound you can also change the vibration effect, the notification popup and the color of the LED light for new messages.
Even if everyone knows by now, I remember that you can also call for free with Whatsapp, as already abundantly written.
