How to Manage Whatsapp Status “Last Seen” and “Online”
WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app and its approach to privacy is one of the key reasons for this.
End-to-end encryption is enabled by default, meaning only the sender and recipient (or group members) can see what you’ve written. This was expanded to include backups to iCloud or Google Drive in 2021.
But another big attraction of WhatsApp is the ability for people to control what information they share with friends, family, and anyone with their number. This includes when you last used the app (known as “last seen”) and whether you are online at any given moment. Both can seem intrusive at times, but they can be completely turned off or tweaked to your liking. Here’s how.
How to Monitor Whatsapp “Last Seen” Status
WhatsApp makes it easy to choose who can see when you last used the app. For the purposes of this guide, an Android phone is used, but the process on iOS is nearly identical:
- Open WhatsApp as usual
- Click on the three dots in the top right corner and select “Settings”. On iOS, “Settings” is a tab in the lower right corner.
Eniron Copeman / Foundry
- Click “Account”, then “Privacy”.
- Click Last Visited, the first option on the list.
Eniron Copeman / Foundry
- From here, you can select Everyone, Nobody, My Contacts, or My Contacts Except… – selecting the latter will take you to a separate screen where you select these exceptions.
However, it’s worth noting that whichever option you choose will also apply to the people you send messages to. You can’t prevent people from seeing your “last seen” status but still seeing it, for example when messaging with someone else.
How to Monitor Whatsapp “Online” Status (Coming Soon)
In August 2022, parent company WhatsApp Meta announced that three more privacy-focused features would be coming to the service.
Perhaps the most important of these is similar control of your “online” status. Contacts see this next to your name if you’re currently using the app, but this can be changed when the feature is available. “this month” – the process is almost identical to the ‘last seen’:
- Open whatsapp
- Tap on the three dots in the top right corner and select “Settings” on Android, or tap “Settings” in the bottom right corner on iOS.
- Click “Account”, then “Privacy”.
- Now you will see the renamed option “Last seen and online” – tap it.
- Here you can choose between “All” (the only option available before) and “Same as last time”.
Whatsapp has confirmed to us that this feature will work exactly as shown in the screenshot below. If you don’t want everyone to see when you’re online, this should be set to the same value as Last Seen.
Meta
As you can see, two more privacy-focused features are coming in the same update.
Instead of everyone in the group knowing when you are leaving, it will be done “silently”. Only administrators will be notified, but this can still be problematic if these are the people you are trying to avoid.
WhatsApp will also block you from taking screenshots of messages that the sender has decided you can only “View Once”. This is something you may have already seen when using banking apps.
We will update this article as soon as new features become available.
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