WhatsApp Web is the easy way to use WhatsApp on any computer in the world, as long as you have your phone to sign in. Once you know how to use WhatsApp Web on your PC, these tips and tricks will make using the platform even easier.
Now that you know the basics of WhatsApp Web, including what it can and can't do, it's time to enhance your experience with some simple tips and tricks.
1. Learn WhatsApp Web's Keyboard Shortcuts
In order to take full advantage of using WhatsApp Web on your computer, you need to learn some keyboard shortcuts. These can make you a typing ninja who does everything a bit faster.
Here's a list of keyboard shortcuts that work in WhatsApp Web:
- Ctrl + Alt + Shift + U: Mark as unread
- Ctrl + Alt + Shift + M: Mute
- Ctrl + Alt + E: Archive chat
- Ctrl + Alt + Backspace: Delete chat
- Ctrl + Alt + Shift + P: Pin chat
- Ctrl + Alt + / (forward slash): Search
- Ctrl + Alt + Shift + F: Search chat
- Ctrl + Alt + N: New chat
- Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N: New group
- Ctrl + Alt + P: Profile and About
- Ctrl + Alt + , (comma): Settings
2. Type and Search Emojis With a Keyboard
Instant messaging feels incomplete without emojis. But it takes forever to change from the keyboard to the mouse, click the emoji icon next to the text box, and then find the right emoji. Thankfully, there's a faster WhatsApp Web trick.
While in the regular text box, type : (colon) followed by the first two letters of the emotion you want to express. You will get a prompt of matching emojis that change with each letter you type.
:th will show this:
:thu will show this:
Use the keyboard's arrow keys to switch back and forth between the emojis displayed. Press Enter to accept.
You can also access the emojis, stickers, and GIFs buttons by pressing Shift + Tab in any chat window. This will highlight the emoji icon, so press Enter to bring up the emojis, stickers, and GIFs menu. Press Tab and Shift + Tab to cycle back and forth through the three choices. Navigate within their menu with the arrow keys.
It's a much faster way to type, and it will help if you familiarize yourself with the emoji to English dictionary.
3. Auto-Change Emoticons to Emojis (or Not)
Some emojis don't need the colon-and-type trick above because one of the best features of WhatsApp Web is to auto-convert them from the classic text emoticons. A helpful redditor extracted the full list of auto-converted emoticons pictured above.
Again, learning these WhatsApp Web shortcuts for the keyboard will make your typing much faster if you practice them regularly.
That said, this auto-conversion can be annoying for some people, so there's an easy fix to keep them as emoticons. All you need is a userscript called WhatsApp Emoticon Preserver.
- Install Tampermonkey, a cross-platform userscript manager, on your browser of choice.
- Go to WhatsApp Emoticon Preserver.
- Click the blue Install button.
- Refresh the WhatsApp Web tab in your browser.
Note that while this will show emoticon characters on your screen, the recipient will still see them as emojis.
4. Use Multiple WhatsApp Accounts on the Same PC
Some people have two phones with separate WhatsApp accounts, or maybe you use a dual-SIM phone with multiple WhatsApp apps. If you want to run two WhatsApp Web accounts on your computer, you can't just open two tabs in Chrome and sign in separately.
The best WhatsApp Web trick to use multiple accounts is to open an incognito window or different browser. So if you have one account signed in to Chrome, start a new window in Incognito Mode. Alternatively, you can fire up a second browser and go to WhatsApp Web through that. Log in as you normally would, using your other account to read the QR code.
In Incognito Mode, you can use WhatsApp Web for an hour before it automatically logs you out.
5. Read Messages Without Blue Tick Notifications
As long as you have those blue tick marks enabled, people can see the exact time you read their WhatsApp text. You can switch off read receipts on your phone if you want to disable this, but there's a cool WhatsApp Web trick to get around this.
If you are talking with someone on WhatsApp and want to read their messages without them getting a read receipt, here's what you can do:
- Open the chat in your WhatsApp Web window.
- Open another program window and change its size so that you can see the full WhatsApp Web chat in the background (or place them side by side).
- Click in the new window and keep your cursor there. This is the critical step, as the computer thinks you are working in a different window.
- Messages will load in the WhatsApp chat window, which you can see, without being marked as read with the blue ticks. Right now, they will be double gray ticks. This means that you have received the message, but not read it.
- When you're happy with marking them as read, click the WhatsApp Web chat window and those ticks will instantly turn blue.
The limitation of this method is that you can only read the content of one chat at a time. But to be honest, how often will you really need to use this WhatsApp Web trick anyway?
6. Get WAToolkit Extension for Message Previews
In WAToolkit, Chrome users have an great extension to add extra features to WhatsApp Web. It adds two cool tricks to built-in WhatsApp Web features, including one that lets you again read over conversations without triggering the read receipt.
- Background notifications: When you get a new message in WhatsApp, you no longer need to switch to the WhatsApp Web tab to read it. The WAToolkit icon's badge shows how many unread messages you have. Hover over the icon and you'll be able to preview the messages, without registering them as having been read in your main chat.
- Full-width chat bubbles: By default, WhatsApp doesn't stretch a person's chat bubble across the full width of the chat window. That's why you get multi-line texts when it would easily fit in a single line of your wide desktop window. WAToolkit fixes this by changing the text bubbles to full-width.
Download: WAToolkit for Chrome (Free)
7. Enable Dark Mode for WhatsApp Web
For a long time, WhatsApp Web's dark mode was a secret feature that wasn't publicly launched. You had to fiddle with browser coding to enable it. But that's no longer the case; dark mode is now available within Settings. To enable it:
- Click the three vertical dots to open the menu.
- Click Settings.
- Click Theme.
- Select Dark.
- Click OK.
8. Change the Chat Wallpaper (and Remove the Doodles)
If you want to spice up your WhatsApp Web chat windows, you should change the chat wallpaper color from the default beige. You can even remove the WhatsApp doodles from the background if you want.
- Click the three vertical dots to open the menu.
- Click Settings.
- Click Chat Wallpaper.
- Select a color tile.
- Optionally, uncheck Add WhatsApp Doodles to remove them.
9. Format Your WhatsApp Messages
Sometimes you might want to apply formatting to your message to give it that extra oomph. Whether you want to emphasize something for importance or comedic effect, you can quickly format your chat messages on WhatsApp web by using these shortcuts:
- Bold: Place an asterisk (*) on both sides of the text.
- Italic: Place an underscore (_) on both sides of the text.
- Strikethrough: Place a tilde (~) on both sides of the text.
- Monospace: Place three backticks (```) on both sides of the text.
Get Even More WhatsApp Tips and Tricks
All of these tips and tricks require you to use WhatsApp Web on a desktop computer. It works equally well on any popular web browser, like Chrome and Firefox.
You no doubt make ample use of WhatsApp on your phone too. Don't miss out on the abundance of tips you can employ there, like increasing chat privacy and controlling where images are saved.