WhatsApp updates bring new features on a regular basis, and in case you did not know, you can mute notifications for select contacts and groups. You can have them appear in your Notifications bar, or not. You choose how deep underground you want to go this holiday season. You could, of course, simply disconnect from the digital realm altogether, but only the bravest, or the most tired, dare to risk having a smartphone withdrawal syndrome.
The WhatsApp feature in question is named Mute, and it lets you customize how you receive the notifications of the incoming messages. Irrespective of whether you just want to not hear the beeps and bloops from your device at night, or early in the morning, or during the holidays altogether, the new feature lets you silence the notifications and still leave your device on and running. The new feature also lets you hide the Notifications from your status bar, a very useful feature for the privacy-minded. If you do so, and mute the notifications, you will still receive the messages, but you will know they’re there only when you open the app.
Here is how you do it.
- First, choose a contact or a group, from which you would like to have your notifications muted. Tap on the group or contact’s name, this is how you usually see the contact’s info.
- Under Media, see the Notifications bar. Here you have two options – Custom Notifications and Mute.
- Tap Mute to mute a contact or group for 8 hours, 1 week, 1 year. Rad, but who knows…
- Here, you can also un-tick the Show Notifications option and stop seeing the notifications in your status bar.
- Back to Custom Notifications, you can disable the pop-up notification for the group or contact if you had it enabled.
There. Now you can play your new games without any distractions, like having to justify your choice to those who wonder why you aren’t out shooting fireworks at your neighbor’s yard.
