Newsletter
You’re the admin for a large WhatsApp group chat, and you need to announce some major news. Guess what, that message about “Big changes coming to the company” just got washed away by the other messages raining into the group. This is frustrating, especially when that announcement is important. Well, your worries are over, as you can simply pin your messages to the top of your WhatsApp group chat.
If you’ve been wondering where this feature has been all your life, well, it’s been in testing. WhatsApp has been testing this feature for several months before bringing it to the masses. That’s also important to know in case you’ve been kicking yourself for not seeing it sooner.
So, how do you pin your WhatsApp messages? We’ll go over that in this piece. Also, we’ll talk about some other interesting things you can do in WhatsApp, so you’ll want to read to the end.
How to pin your WhatsApp messages
Pinning your messages in WhatsApp is pretty easy, but there are just a few things you’ll want to know about the feature. Firstly, pinning your messages will differ depending on what operating system you’re using.
If you’re using Android, then you’ll want to tap and hold on the message you want to pin. You’ll see a little menu pop up. Tap on the thumbtack icon. This will pin the message. If you’re using iOS, then the process is a little different. Instead of holding, you’ll just swipe your message to the right. This will bring up the menu with the Pin option.
Unpinning your messages is just as easy as pinning them. For Android, hold your finger down on the pinned message and you’ll see a thumbtack icon with a line through it. Tapping on that will push the message back to its original place in the message feed. For iOS, swipe right on that pinned message and tap on the Unpin button.
Other things you need to know about this feature
When you pin a long message, the app will truncate it. You’ll have to tap on it to see the full message. This helps in case you need to post an extended announcement.
You can pin any kind of message. Along with regular text-based chats, you can pin pictures, videos, and even polls. So, you’re not limited in what you can pin to the top of your group chat. That’s great because not all important messages are only text-based. People often need to send other forms of messages for their colleagues to see. Say, you need to share a large file with your employees with important documents; you can do that.
Something to know is that these posts are temporary. At the time of writing this article, there’s no way to pin a message permanently. When you’re pinning a message, you’ll have the option to have it stay up for 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days. That can be a bit frustrating if you need something to stay for the duration of the group. However, here’s hoping that WhatsApp changes this. The message will be set to 24 hours by default.
Other cool things you can do with WhatsApp
WhatsApp is always testing and launching new features, and it’s so easy to miss a few. If you’re a WhatsApp user, then you might want to know about the features that are coming out for the platform. Here’s a quick rundown of what you can do.
Original quality media
Before, WhatsApp would heavily compress any media that you upload on the platform. This is something that’s always frustrated people who want to share important pictures on the platform. Well, that’s a thing of the past. The company now preserves the original quality of your media. If you don’t want to upload in the original quality for some reason, you can choose the quality of the pictures that you’re uploading.
At the time of writing this article, this ability is only available for iOS users. However, the feature is going to come to Android users.
View-once messages
This is a trend that was popularized by Snapchat messages. As the name suggests, when you receive a view-once message, you’ll only be able to view it once before it’s deleted. This means that, if you want to see it again, you’ll need to ask the sender to send it again.
This feature is useful for people who need to send important information that they don’t want to fall into the wrong hands. It’s very useful for people who work in high-level positions. Either that or it could just come in handy when you want to confess your undying love to someone.
Secret chats
This feature is actually several features that add to a more secure (or surreptitious) chatting experience. Firstly, there are locked chats that no one can access without a password. This feature comes in handy if you’re talking with a colleague about sensitive matters. High-level executives often have access to some seriously locked-down information pertaining to their company. This information needs to stay behind lock and key.
Now, WhatsApp used to have those chats visible in your chat feed. While other people couldn’t access them, it was still obvious that you had secret chats. This is why WhatsApp allows you to hide those locked chats with a secret code. Having locked chats is good, but if people can see that you have locked chats, they can become curious as to what you have to hide.
This feature will hide your locked chats from your chat feed. In order to access those chats, you’ll need to enter a secret code that you created. You’ll type that code into the search bar.
WhatsApp is always working on new features, so always be on the lookout for new and exciting additions to the platform.