WhatsApp just revealed a new feature to hide your noisy group chats

Permanently mute your family group chat

WhatsApp
(Image credit: iStock / Getty)

WhatsApp on Tuesday announced it was rolling out Archived Chats that lets users focus on only their most important messages — and deprioritize less important ones.

The feature means users can hide their less-important chats in an ‘Archived Chats Folder.’ Even if a user then receives new messages in these chats, they will remain muted until a user manually chooses to unarchive them from the folder. 

According to WhatsApp’s blog post, users have long demanded the ability to quietly tuck away messages in a separate Archived Chats folder, rather than having them reinstated in the central chat list when a new message rolls in.

We’ve all got those nuisance WhatsApp conversations that are stuck in our inbox, bundled in with the rest of our important chats. All you need to now do is archive individual and group chats you’d rather not have in your main chat list. Once done, you can revel in the newly-instituted tranquility of your tidy WhatsApp inbox. 

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WhatsApp has outlined its motives behind the feature, saying that it's aware that “not everything always needs to be front and center. We want to make sure that WhatsApp remains a private and secure place where you can speak to the people who are most important to you and where you’re in control of your messages.”

The feature has reportedly been in testing since at least April 2019, with WhatsApp confirming to Gadgets 360 that Archived Chats is now rolling out in its app across all devices, including the best iPhone and best Android phones

Luke Wilson

Luke is a former news writer at T3 who covered all things tech at T3. Disc golf enthusiast, keen jogger, and fond of all things outdoors (when not indoors messing around with gadgets), Luke wrote about a wide-array of subjects for T3.com, including Android Auto, WhatsApp, Sky, Virgin Media, Amazon Kindle, Windows 11, Chromebooks, iPhones and much more, too.