You Can Finally Turn Off WhatsApp Conversations Permanently
Every chat service should provide at least three things: a way to turn off conversations so that your chatty friends never bother you again, a way to leave a conversation without notifying the group you have, and a way to prevent active conversations from appearing at the top of your message list. if you don’t want that.
WhatsApp may not let you do all three for now, but at least you can now permanently disable group and individual conversations on the service, which at least prevents your device from spamming notifications that aren’t relevant to you.
First, make sure you have the latest version of WhatsApp available from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store . Launch WhatsApp, press and hold the conversation you want to mute, and tap the mute icon, which looks like a speaker with a line running through it, in the app’s top toolbar (on Android) or at the bottom of the screen (on iOS.)
On the screen that appears, just click on “Always” and make sure the “Show notifications” checkbox is unchecked. Now you will no longer receive pings when people add, add, and add to a conversation. Easy, right?
The only thing about this solution is that it won’t force you to stop talking. You will not receive notifications of new messages, but everyone in the chat will still be able to communicate with each other. And when they do, it will move the conversation to the top of the WhatsApp list.
If you don’t want this to happen, the only recourse is to get out of the conversation altogether. To do this, tap chat and then tap the three dots icon in the upper right corner on Android, or swipe left to access the icon on iOS. Click More and then select Leave Group to say goodbye. The archive of your conversation will remain on your WhatsApp list up to this point, but you will not see anything new that people say in the group.
However, this will notify the said group that you have left, which annoys me personally. Every chat application must have a ” Goodbye Irish ” option; I don’t want my friends to be nervous because I don’t have more time or interest to learn about their adventures in Animal Crossing: New Horizons . Perhaps this option will be added in a future WhatsApp update; until then, being able to permanently disable everyone is a reward in itself.
(And, yes, you can also mute individual WhatsApp conversations. But if you do, you can reimagine your friendship with the person on the other end of the line – unless he’s pretty damn chatty.)