The blue ticks serve as a read receipt on WhatsApp. We’ll show you how to turn off this feature so you have more flexibility when answering chats and messages.
Read messages without sending a read receipt
With WhatsApp you have to think carefully about whether and when you should read a received message. Because once opened, your chat partner recognizes directly from two blue ticks that you have read the message. This can quickly lead to arguments: “Why didn’t you answer directly, you read it after all?”
To avoid disputes about unanswered replies and to protect your privacy, you can deactivate WhatsApp read receipts and remove the colored ticks from the chat service. This is how you have to go about it.
Disable read receipts on WhatsApp
1Open the WhatsApp application on your iPhone and tap on “Settings” at the bottom right. Then select the ”Privacy” menu. For Android phones you open the settings via the three dots in the top right corner of the main menu.
2Then activate or deactivate the switch at ”read receipt” .
With the read receipt turned off, neither your chat partner nor you can see whether the message or voicemail has been read by the other party. Read receipts, on the other hand, are displayed in groups even after deactivation.
Read messages without sending a read receipt
If you don’t want to do without the read confirmation yourself, leave the option activated and use these tricks to read messages without triggering the confirmation yourself.
On our overview pages we tell you more tips for sending and managing WhatsApp messages and show you everything you need to know about protecting your privacy in WhatsApp.
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