Much to the chagrin of users, WhatsApp quietly rolled out read receipts (allowing people to see exactly when a message was read, rather than just sent) earlier this month. The app always displays a checkmark when you send a message, which changes to two gray checkmarks when the message is sent. Now when the recipient reads your message, the app will show two blue ticks
(See also: How to use WhatsApp on PC)
This feature is being rolled out without an update to the app itself. This means there will be no privacy setting to disable read receipts when the feature is rolled out. The lack of this basic feature in WhatsApp really annoys us and we promise to provide a tutorial on how to disable WhatsApp blue tick soon. As we said, WhatsApp has now rolled out this feature for Android.
Here’s how to get rid of those annoying blue ticks in WhatsApp – but if you do, you won’t be able to see your receipts either. If you want to check when others saw your messages, then you need to allow them to see your read receipts. Currently, this only works for Android users, and only if you update the app manually via the WhatsApp website. WhatsApp typically releases updates via its website first, then rolls out updates to Android’s Google Play Store before rolling out updates for other platforms, so the update will be available on all devices soon.
The first step is to get the latest APK file from WhatsApp:
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Download the latest (version 2.11.444) WhatsApp apk from the official website.
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On your Android phone, go to Settings > Security > Check for unknown sourcesto enable installation of applications from outside Google Play. Note that the exact path to the settings may vary depending on your device manufacturer and Android version – an important thing to note is that you allow the installation of apps from unknown sources.
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Open the apk on your Android phone. This will install the latest version of the app on your device.
(See also: How to backup WhatsApp messages)
Once the app is installed, here’s how to disable read receipts:
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Open WhatsApp and click three vertical points icon in the upper right corner.
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Go now Settings > Account > Privacy.
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Uncheck read receipt.
(See also: How to hide the last thing you saw on WhatsApp)
This will disable the blue tick on WhatsApp. As we mentioned above, the feature is not yet available on other platforms or on Google Play, but now that the feature has appeared on the official WhatsApp apk, we hope that the update will bring it to all platforms. We will update this article when this happens. Until then, you can head to our How-to section for more tutorials.
