Tips to master WhatsApp in 2018

WhatsApp is one of the biggest communication apps in the world. It’s daily usage figures by users around the world are incredible, and they are expected to keep growing. In fact, reports suggest that by the end of 2018, one in three people all over the world will use WhatsApp on a daily basis. That’s an enormous number of users!

Whether you’ve been using WhatsApp from the moment it launched or you’re new to the service, we guess there are some things that you might not know about the social tool. Well, we figured you might want to know how to optimize the way you communicate, so take a look below to discover some very useful tips. 

1) Disable Auto-Download

A lot of people aren’t aware of the fact that WhatsApp is automatically set to download everything that passes through your messages. That means every photo, every video and every file is saved to your phone. This can be great when you want to reminisce on times gone by, but you’ll quickly find your memory being eaten. Gigabytes of data and memory is used as the app saves everything to your phone, so disabling it can be a huge blessing.

First, open up the app and from the home screen tap on the 3 dots in the top-right hand corner. Then navigate down to “Settings” and “Data and Storage Usage”. From here you can decide what gets downloaded. We suggest that you set everything to off and then you can manually save the content you want.

2) WhatsApp Web / Desktop App

A lot of people don’t realize that you can use WhatsApp on your laptop or computer. There are two methods to achieve this. Either download the software for your operating system, or just open a browser and load web.whatsapp.com. Both will provide you with the same experience and it’ll save you looking at your phone at every opportunity.

Once you’ve loaded the browser for the very first time, you’ll be shown a QR code. You’ll need to scan this from within the app in order to start utilizing this feature. To do this, simply tap the three dots on the home screen again and tap on “WhatsApp Web”. 

While we’re on the subject of the desktop version of the app, we should cover sending files. On your device you might be limited to sending photos and videos, but on the browser or desktop app you can send anything. Anything at all. Simply tap the plus icon and then select whatever file you want. It’s a great way to share large documents or files.

4) Privacy Settings

As soon as you download the app, your privacy settings are automatically set. This means that whenever you open the app, people can see that you’re online. They can also see how long ago it was when you were last online. And of course, two blue ticks will show your friends that you’ve opened and read their message.

This isn’t ideal for everyone so to disable it head over to your “Settings” and then “Account”. From there you’ll be able to choose “Privacy” and adjust your last seen option. You’ll also be able to disable the read receipts, so nobody will know if you’ve read their messages. The flip side to changing these settings means that you’ll also stop being able to see when your friend was last online, and you’ll stop having access to those two blue ticks.