WhatsApp has become one of the most popular messaging platforms in the world, with over 2 billion active users. One of the key features of WhatsApp is the ability to share status updates – short videos or photos that disappear after 24 hours.
While statuses can be a fun way to share quick updates, you may occasionally want to mute someone’s status if you find their frequent updates annoying or irrelevant. Thankfully, muting statuses is easy to do on both mobile and desktop.
In this article, we’ll walk through the steps to mute someone’s status on WhatsApp desktop. We’ll also cover how to unmute statuses when you want to see someone’s updates again.
How to Mute Someone’s Status on WhatsApp Desktop
Muting someone’s status on WhatsApp desktop only takes a few clicks. Here are the steps:
- Open WhatsApp desktop and go to the Chats tab.
- Locate the chat with the contact whose status you want to mute.
- Right click on the contact’s name in the chat list.
- Select ‘Mute status updates’ from the pop-up menu.
That’s it! The contact’s status updates will now be muted. You won’t see their status at the top of your chats or in the Status tab. Other contacts’ statuses will display as normal.
Muting Status Updates for Groups
You can also mute status updates for entire groups:
- Right click on the group name in your chats.
- Select ‘Mute status updates’ to mute that group’s statuses.
This prevents statuses from group members displaying at the top of your chats. Other groups won’t be affected.
Unmuting Someone’s Status
When you’ve muted someone’s status, you can unmute it again with a few clicks:
- Right click on the muted contact’s name.
- Select ‘Unmute status updates’ from the menu.
Their statuses will now display normally again. You can repeat these steps to re-mute them at any time.
Muting vs. Blocking on WhatsApp
Muting status updates is different from blocking someone on WhatsApp. Here’s a comparison:
| Muting | Blocking |
|---|---|
| – Hides their status updates | – Prevents all communication with them |
| – You can still message them | – They can’t call, message or view your profile |
| – They don’t know you’ve muted them | – They know you’ve blocked them |
So muting is purely for statuses, while blocking prevents all communication. Muting is often better if you just find someone’s statuses annoying but still want to chat normally.
What Happens When You Mute Status Updates?
When you mute someone on WhatsApp desktop, here’s exactly what happens:
- You won’t see their status updates in the Status tab or at the top of your chats.
- They can still view and react to your statuses.
- You can still message them as normal.
- Voice and video calls are unaffected.
- You won’t get notifications about their statuses.
- Your mute settings sync across WhatsApp desktop and mobile.
So muting is purely for status updates – all other communication remains unchanged. The contact doesn’t receive any notification that you’ve muted them.
Advanced Muting Options
WhatsApp offers a few advanced muting options as well:
Muting Notifications But Still Seeing Statuses
You can mute notifications for a contact’s status updates specifically. Their statuses will still show up, but you won’t get sound/pop-up notifications when they post.
To do this:
- Go to WhatsApp Settings > Notifications.
- Select the contact.
- Turn off ‘Status update’ notifications.
Muting Archived Chats
Chats you’ve archived will remain muted even if you unmute that contact elsewhere. To unmute an archived chat:
- Go to Archived Chats.
- Unarchive the chat.
- Manually unmute the contact’s statuses.
Pinning Important Chats
You can pin up to 3 chats to the top of your list so they never get archived. This overrides archiving mute settings for those chats.
Muting Statuses on Mobile
You can also mute statuses on WhatsApp mobile:
- Tap and hold the chat to mute.
- Tap Mute > Mute Status.
Your mute settings sync automatically across mobile and desktop.
Conclusion
Muting status updates on WhatsApp desktop is an easy way to hide annoying or irrelevant statuses from specific contacts. Just right click their chat and select ‘Mute status updates’.
Muting doesn’t affect your ability to communicate normally or mute other notifications. And the muted contact isn’t notified at all. It’s the perfect way to silently filter out unwanted statuses.
You can unmute statuses at any time by returning to the chat and selecting ‘Unmute status updates’. Mute settings also sync across mobile and desktop.
So if you’re tired of a contact’s constant status updates, remember the mute option is there! Their statuses will disappear, while all your other WhatsApp functions remain unchanged.