Sometimes you may desperately want to read a WhatsApp message without letting the sender know that you have read it, or without having to reply immediately. When you send someone a message on the mobile messaging platform, you see a little gray tick when the message has been sent. It becomes two gray ticks when your message is delivered and turns blue when your contact has read the message.
A very easy and simple WhatsApp trick
If you are on the other side of the exchange, you may not want the other person to know that you have read their message. It can’t be turned off for group conversations, but there is a trick to switch off read receipts for individual conversations. The hack is pretty simple and easy. After you receive a message, turn on the airplane or flight mode before opening up WhatsApp to read it.
It disables any WiFi, 3G or 4G Internet access, preventing WhatsApp from connecting to its servers to tell the sender that you have read their text. While still in airplane mode, exit the conversation. Now in the Chats view, tap and hold on the conversation until a popup with various options appears. Choose Mark as unread, and then properly close down the app. Now you can turn off the airplane mode and those little ticks won’t turn blue.
There is a second trick, but you may not like it
Another way is to disable the read receipts option altogether. But don’t forget that it works two ways. If you don’t want to let others know when you read their message, you too will not be able to see when they have read yours. If you want to disable the feature anyway, go to Settings > Account > Privacy. There you will see ‘Read Receipts’ option that you can disable.
A few days ago, WhatsApp announced that it now had more than one billion active users worldwide. With its growing popularity, the messaging platform has also become a target of scammers and fraudsters.
