Hush little WhatsApp, don’t say a word…

This week, I thought I’d tell you about quite a handy feature in WhatsApp that lets you mute the notifications from individual conversations.  Personally, I’ve found this very useful for group chats, but you can do it for individual people as well.

I started doing this after I joined a WhatsApp group for climbers in my local area.  It’s a lovely group of people, and it really helps for making plans to go out climbing with a group at the weekend.

However, like with many group chats, it’s got a lot of people in it.  So when the group starts chatting about the best climbing spot, my phone will be buzzing and pinging every few seconds like it’s having a fit, which can get really aggravating after a while.

But I don’t want to leave the group, as it can be very useful, so instead I decided that the next time the chat got busy and I didn’t want to know about it, that I would mute the notifications for it instead.  It’s pretty straightforward to do:

1. Open WhatsApp and tap on the conversation you want to mute.
2. On iPhones, tap on the name of the person (or group) at the top.  On Android phones, tap on the three dots menu button in the top right.
3. You’ll see an option that says “Mute” or “Mute notifications” – tap on that.
4. You can then choose between muting the notifications from this particular chat for 8 hours, a week, or “Always”.

It’s up to you which one you choose – I find 8 hours useful if I only need a short break, like if I’m busy at work or trying to catch up with a friend and don’t want to be bothered.  I tend to use a week if there’s some big climbing festival coming up that I know I won’t be going to, or if I’m away for the weekend.  I haven’t used the “Always” option yet, but if I did I’d have to remember to keep checking the group every so often, or those unread messages would add up pretty quickly!

I should point out that muting the notifications doesn’t stop you from receiving these messages, it just means that your phone doesn’t tell you about them when they arrive.  If you want to stop receiving messages from a group chat, you’ll need to leave the group, and you’ll find that option in the same menu as the Mute option.