Top tips for using WhatsApp on your Lumia

Whether you’ve been using WhatsApp on your Lumia for years or have just started today, we’ve got some top tips to make the most of your instant messaging.

Go unseen

By default, WhatsApp displays a “Last Seen” timestamp that shows all of your friends when you’re online. For the most part, that’s a handy feature, but you can turn it off if you’re concerned about your privacy.

To do so, head to Settings > Account > Privacy, and change the “Last Seen” option to “Everyone,” “My Contacts,” or “Nobody.”

Note: If you don’t share your “Last Seen,” you won’t be able to see other people’s “Last Seen” details, either.

See when people read your message

WhatsApp chats feature a ticking system on the messages you send. Two grey ticks indicate that the message is delivered, and two blue ticks show that the message has been read.

Long-pressing the message and selecting “Info” will show you exactly what time a message was read.

Use Wi-Fi for your media downloads

Some of your chats will contain photos, videos, audio, or all three–depending on what you and your pals are sharing.

To save on cellular data usage, you can opt to download those large files only via Wi-Fi. Go to Settings > Chat settings > Media auto-download. Next, the settings for images, video and audio can be changed to “Never,” “Wi-Fi,” “Wi-Fi and cellular,” and “Wi-Fi, cellular, roaming.”

Pin chats to your Start screen

Save yourself a couple of clicks when you want to send or read a message.

By pinning individuals or groups to your Start screen, you’re shown a brief snippet of any incoming communication and you’re just one tap away from the conversation.

How-to: Tap and hold on the conversation > Pin to start.

Block people

No matter how subtle your hints are when it comes to telling people you don’t want to talk to them, sometimes a straight-up block is the only answer.

For those people, you can access the blocked contacts setting from the main screen > ellipsis (…) > settings > contacts > blocked contacts > plus (+) symbol.

Don’t worry; when you’re friends again, you can unblock them through the same menu.

Make a WhatsApp voice call

Added to Lumia in the latest WhatsApp update, you can now make a phone call directly from within the app. Just open a chat and look for the phone icon at the bottom of the screen. Press it to initiate a call.

WhatsApp is free to download from the Windows Phone Store, try it today.