WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging service providers in the world, recently spawned diligent new features for chat. There are many interesting functions that are added through this feature set, such as self-disappearing messages and storage management to save on cellphone memory usage.
Well, we’ve collected five new features that are useful in daily short message chat activities, here are how to use them. These five features can be used by WhatsApp users. The details are as follows.
1. Always Mute
Often annoyed by message notifications from other people or busy groups? Always Mute can help. As the name suggests, the Always Mute feature has a function to mute group or private conversation notifications forever.
Before the presence of Always Mute, WhatsApp users could only turn off notifications in WhatsApp groups for a maximum of a year. The Always Mute option itself replaces the mute duration for one year. Meanwhile, the other mute options are still the same, which are eight hours and a week in duration.
The way to mute notifications forever is easy. First of all, open WhatsApp and press ( hold ) the group or private conversation that you want to turn off notifications for until a check mark appears. Then, click the icon that resembles a speake at the top right of the display and select the “Always” option. After that, click the “OK” button.
2. Advanced Search
Different from the usual Search feature, Advanced Search can search for messages on WhatsApp specifically by type.
This more sophisticated search feature is intended to make it easier for users when they want to browse files in the form of photos, videos, audios, documents, links, or GIF stickers that have been sent through the messaging application.
For how to use it, users can simply click the Search icon at the top right of the WhatsApp main screen, which is shaped like a magnifying glass. After that, WhatsApp will display what file categories to search for, for example photos, videos, audios, links, GIFs, and documents.
Then, select one of the file types you want to search and WhatsApp will sort messages by that type. Users can then easily type in related keywords to make searching easier.
3. Storage Management
Various sending files, such as photos and videos, can make the size of WhatsApp swell so that it takes up cellphone memory. The way to free up space is to delete large files.
The problem is, this is difficult to do manually via the file explorer on the phone. Now, Storage Management can make the “cleaning up” process easier by sorting files automatically.
Users can immediately see which files are the largest in size and delete them at once when they are not used. The use of cellphone memory is also more efficient. How to use it yourself is quite easy. First of all, open the WhatsaApp Settings menu and click on the “Storage and data” and “Manage storage” menus.
The next page provides information on storage media usage, along with the sorting of files according to three categories, namely “Forwarded many times”, “Larger than 5 MB”, and “Chats”. After selecting a category, users can see all media files stored on WhatsApp along with their size descriptions in order, starting with the largest.
Here, select the media file you want to delete by pressing it until a check mark appears and clicking the trash can icon that appears in the upper right corner. Then, click the “Delete” button.
4. Disappearing Messages
Disappearing Messages is a WhatsApp feature that can be used to delete old messages by itself after seven days, starting from when the message was sent. To activate it, first open the other person’s contact, then open the contact’s personal info.
Then, scroll ( scroll ) screen down to find the feature “message while” marked with a similar icon hour. It lies between the encryption features and starred messages. After tapping the “Dissapearing message” feature, select the “On” option.
When it’s turned on, a notification will appear informing you that the feature is active and will delete messages after seven days.
5. Search the Web
Search the Web is a feature that lets users check the veracity of the messages that have been forwarded ( forward ) repeatedly, through a search engine such as Google.
This feature was launched to help combat the spread of disinformation or hoax content on this popular chat platform. This feature will appear in messages that have been forwarded many times, or messages marked with information ” forwarded ” accompanied by “two arrows”.
When they find the message, the user will find an icon in the shape of a magnifying glass, to the right of the chat bubble, the message that was forwarded repeatedly.
When the icon is clicked, the user will be immediately taken to the web search site page, and will automatically search for information according to the keywords contained in the forward message.
