Disabling WhatsApp Blue ticks on Android
Blue Ticks WhatsApp,  WhatsApp users all around the world received a surprise in early November when they started noticing blue tick marks next to the messages that they sent. For those who don’t know how the ticks work in WhatsApp – when your message has been sent a single tick appears, when your message has been delivered but not read two grey ticks and when your message has been read two blue ticks appear. The same goes for group chats when the message is received by every group member with two grey ticks, and when it has been read by every member they turn to blue. To see the time at which they were read users can now hold down on a particular post
Although this cannot be called a new feature blackberry messenger users had these receipts long ago, so did WeChat and Viber, you can even add these to your Gmail inbox. Even Facebook messenger had these, so not having a read feature was somewhat unique to WhatsApp and not actually a shortcoming that had to be addressed. So the read receipts cannot actually be called innovation but adding an off switch to this feature might qualify as one.
This feature seems to be useful at first, Blue Ticks WhatsApp, messaging a friend and wish to ask them something, if those marks haven’t turned blue they haven’t read the message yet, and giving them a call might be a better option. Several times you might have received information from someone and had to reply that you have seen it with this feature you don’t have to do that. It also meant that ignoring some people just got a bit more difficult.
WhatsApp Blue Ticks on Android
WhatsApp quite recently added a feature in their update which allowed you to switch off the last seen time but a drawback to this off switch was that you were able to see the last seen time for other people either. Now after rolling out the feature of reading receipts through blue ticks they have released another update which is in its beta phase to shut these off but only for Android devices. Since this update is in its beta phase it is not official yet and when would this update be released for iOS, windows, and blackberry is not known.
Latest Android Version
Mentioned below is the method for switching off the read receipts, but before that make sure that you are running android 2.1 or later version:
- Go to settings and in the security tab enable download from unknown sources
- Visit the website of WhatsApp and download the APK file under whatsapp.com/Android/
- Once you have downloaded it, tap on the install option.
- After completing installation, select settings>account>privacy. Then uncheck the option for reading receipts.
Android App Development
Once you have disabled it you won’t be able to see these blue ticks on your sent messages as well much like the last seen setting and this feature is not applicable to group messages. The read receipts feature didn’t go well with many users. With this update, WhatsApp appears to be taking measures to please those who were unhappy.
