7 WhatsApp Web Tips and Tricks All Users Should Know

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 WhatsApp Web even better.

Now that you know the basics of using WhatsApp Web, including what it can and can’t do, it’s time to enhance WhatsApp Web 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 + N: Start new chat
Ctrl + Shift + ]: Next chat
Ctrl + Shift + [: Previous chat
Ctrl + E: Archive chat
Ctrl + Shift + M: Mute chat
Ctrl + Backspace: Delete chat
Ctrl + Shift + U: Mark as unread
Ctrl + Shift + N: Create new group
Ctrl + P: Open profile status

Apart from these, you can also employ all of the universal Windows keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl + Shift + Equals to zoom and enlarge text. The same goes for Mac keyboard shortcuts too, of course.

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. There’s a faster WhatsApp Web trick for keyboard warriors.

While in the regular text box, type colon (Shift + ;/: Key) 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 button by pressing Shift+Tab when 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 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.

Please note, this will show emoticon characters on your screen, but 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 into Chrome, start a new window in Incognito Mode, or 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 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 do:

Open the chat in your WhatsApp Web window.
Open a Notepad file (or any other window), and change its size so that you can see the full WhatsApp Web chat in the background.
Click in the Notepad file 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 background chat window, which you can see, without being marked as read with the blue ticks. Right now, they will be double grey ticks, meaning the messages are received by you, but not read.
When you’re OK 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 how often do you really need to use this WhatsApp Web trick anyway?

6. Get WAToolkit Extension for Message Previews

In WAToolkit, Chrome users have an excellent 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 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.

Remember, you can also use Google Chrome extensions in Opera and other browsers.

Download: WAToolkit for Chrome (Free)

7. Enable Dark Mode for WhatsApp Web

Dark Mode is a hidden WhatsApp Web feature that the company hasn’t yet launched to the public. You will find articles online about how to change the code in a browser tab to enable Dark Mode, and it’s not too hard, but might seem daunting for some.

But the easier way is to download the Dark WhatsApp Web extension. It’s a neat WhatsApp Web shortcut to implement exactly what the code changes bring about, but without all that hassle. With one click, you can switch Dark Mode on and off in WhatsApp Web.

Download: Dark WhatsApp Web for Chrome (Free)