If you’re one of those who uses WhatsApp to talk to everyone, it’s possible that sometimes you need a conversation not to appear alongside your other usual chats. We’re not going to assume the worst (well, a little), but various scenarios can occur where this might be the case (for example, organizing a surprise birthday for that partner who sometimes glances at your chat list). For similar situations, WhatsApp allows you to hide a chat (or as many as you want).
In fact, you can restrict chats to protect them with identification, or completely hide them and access them secretly by entering a passcode.
How to hide a WhatsApp chat so that no one but you can access it
To hide a WhatsApp chat you can follow these steps:
Open the conversation you want to hide and tap the contact’s name at the top.
In the WhatsApp contact options, you’ll see «Restrict chat» — tap the switch to turn it on.
Your smartphone will now notify you that this conversation will be protected by your phone’s biometric system (face recognition, fingerprint sensor…) and you will only be able to access it after identifying yourself.
If you tap Restricted chats, the app will ask you to identify yourself to access the chats you’ve hidden.
Now, to be able to access restricted chats on other devices where you also use WhatsApp (for example, WhatsApp Web), you’ll need to set a secret code.
On your smartphone, tap the text that says «create a secret code» and set a word, number, or emoji that’s easy for you to remember.
From now on, you’ll be able to access your hidden chats in WhatsApp from other devices where you’re logged in.
Hide restricted chats even more
However, the fact that the «Restricted chats» section appears in the conversation list reveals that you do have hidden conversations. To prevent anyone snooping on your phone from knowing you have restricted chats, WhatsApp has added an option to also hide this section.
Go into your restricted chats section and tap «Settings».
Now enable the option «Hide restricted chats».
This way, the «Restricted chats» section will no longer appear at the top of your WhatsApp conversation list.
So, how do you access the hidden chats now? Very easy — remember the secret word you set earlier? Simply enter it in WhatsApp’s search bar. Then, as if it were a secret passphrase, the «Restricted chats» section will be revealed and you can enter again.
In this way, no one will know you have hidden chats even if they take your phone and check your conversations — unless they find your secret word and enter it in the search, which is quite unlikely.
Bring a chat back to the public list
If you no longer need to hide a conversation in WhatsApp, you can simply follow the same initial steps: open the chat and turn off «Restrict chat».
You will have to identify yourself again to prove that it’s you undoing the action, and the conversation will return to the rest of your chats.
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