WhatsApp has been rolling out some really great new upgrades for both the Android and iPhone versions of the app over the last few months, adding new features and enhancing user privacy.
But one thing that WhatsApp still doesn't let you do is directly find out if you've been blocked by someone else, which can be frustrating if you're the person being blocked as the blocker can do so silently. This is, so WhatsApp has stated, to protect a user's privacy.
However, there are ways you can Sherlock Holmes whether you've been blocked by a contact on the sly. These tell-tale signs include:
1. Any of the messages that you send to the contact will always only ever show one tick in the chat window and never two.
2. Whenever you try to view a contact's last seen or online status in a chat window nothing is displayed.
3. If you try to make a call to the contact they never connect.
4. The contact's profile picture never changes, even if you can see it has changed on someone else's handset.
Each of these is a way to deduce whether someone has blocked you on WhatsApp. If you notice one or more of these things over an elongated period of time then chances are you've been blocked, but it isn't a 100 per cent guarantee you've been blocked. This comes back to WhatsApp looking to protect each of its user's privacy by keeping the blocking as secret as possible.
And, talking of privacy, if you do want to block a contact on WhatsApp on Android or iPhone then it is easy. Here's how to block someone on both phone platforms.
[On Android]
1. Click the three dots menu option in the top-right of the app window and then select settings.
2. Select Account then Privacy and then Blocked contacts.
3. Select Add, and then pick a contact from your list.
[On iPhone]
1. Select WhatsApp Settings.
2. Navigate to Account then Privacy then Blocked.
3. Select Add New, and then pick a contact from your list.
T3's takeaway from the current state of WhatsApp blocking on iPhone and Android? It's a pretty strong balance of protecting user privacy while also letting the blockee know, subtlety, that they could've been cut off. We think privacy should always come first though online, and as such it's nice to see that Facebook, who owns WhatsApp, is taking this seriously in the app.
In other WhatsApp news, the messaging app looks like it is shortly going to be getting emoji reactions in chats. The feature, which is currently still under development, will see WhatsApp gain functionality that is now commonplace in other social media and messaging applications, with users able to react to their contacts' messages with smiley faces and more.
The new functionality is slated to be coming shortly to users on the WhatsApp beta program, before being rolled out to public users in a future update.
And, talking of new WhatsApp functionality, the other big news is that WhatsApp is reported as coming to both iPads and Android tablets, and in the form of a native app, too.
No release date for the slate versions of the apps have been given so far other than that they are arriving in a "future update", but was has been revealed is that tablets will be added to WhatsApp multi-device support, and that they will be capable of operating independently once linked to an account to the primary phone.
This means that a user will be able link their phone's WhatsApp account to their iPad or Android tablet and then use WhatsApp on the tablet even if their phone isn't with them. It seems like a feature many people would love, so here's hoping it drops along with emoji reactions sooner rather than later.
