Damn those dreaded blue ticks...
As with most things in life, technology is often a double-edged sword – and especially when it comes to Whatsapp’s ‘read’ feature. Yes, we want to know when our friends/family/that guy we met on Tinder has read our messages, but we also don’t want people to know when we’ve read theirs.
Although you might be able to gather the general gist of a message from its opening line, the majority of the time, you’ll want to read the whole thing – but without the pressure of having to reply immediately that inevitably comes with the blue ticks.
Those dreaded blue ticks. We know when you’ve read our messages, people. But we don’t want you to know when you’ve read ours.
This trick will teach you how to read your messages, incognito, without the blue ticks ever showing up…
1. Don’t open the message when it first appears, and close all notifications.
2. Set your phone to aeroplane mode – which is also great for saving battery, BTW. Make sure you don’t turn your Wi-Fi on – you have to be uncontactable by the world.
3. Now you can read whatever Whatsapps you like – and they won’t show up with the blue tick. However, in case you suddenly decide you want to reply, remember you can’t – because you’re on aeroplane mode.
4. Once you’ve read it, make sure to entirely close the app.
5. Turn off aeroplane mode, go back to normal, and enjoy your sneaky new secret. But remember, if you open that conversation again, the blue ticks will appear again.
Genius, or what?
Alternatively, you can turn off read receipts, which means people will never know when you’ve read their messages.
However, you won’t know when they’ve read yours.
It’s hard to decide what’s more important, isn’t it?