How to Read WhatsApp Messages Without Alerting the Sender

Everybody’s out to dodge those dreaded double blue ticks in WhatsApp. You know, the read receipts that tell the sender that you have read their messages and put subtle pressure on you to respond immediately. Thankfully, with the next three tricks you can read messages without alerting the sender.

1. Turn on Airplane mode before you open any received WhatsApp messages. This takes WhatsApp offline and you’ll be reading the messages from the app cache. Be sure to close WhatsApp before switching off the airplane mode.

2. Add a WhatsApp widget to your home screen and read the messages at a glance. During testing, I was even able to scroll through long messages from the widget and still keep the blue ticks from showing up.

Your experience with these two hacks might vary, so it’s best to test them out with a friend before you use either of them on a regular basis.

The worst thing to ever happen to my mental wellbeing are the ticks being able to turn blue in WhatsApp

— Richard Butler (@rmdbutler) January 19, 2016

3. Uncheck the box next to Read receipts from Settings > Account > Privacy. Remember that once you do this, you won’t be able to see read receipts from other people either, barring those in group chats.

You might also want to check out a few other awesome WhatsApp tricks we have written about.

Do the read receipts in WhatsApp bother you? Have you turned them off?