Quick answer: No, if you mute someone’s status updates on WhatsApp, they will not know or be notified that you have muted them. Their status updates simply won’t show up for you in the status tab, but they will still be able to see your status updates.
Muting someone’s status updates is a handy way to avoid seeing content from certain contacts in your feed without unfollowing or blocking them completely. It allows you to stay connected on WhatsApp without having their frequent status updates cluttering up your feed.
How Does Muting Status Updates Work?
When you mute someone’s status updates, you essentially turn off notifications and visibility for that specific contact’s status posts. Their statuses will not automatically show up in your status tab where you view friends’ updates, so you won’t see anything they post as a status until you manually check their profile.
The muting is only one-way, meaning they can still view and interact with your status updates per normal. You muting them does not affect their ability to view your profile or status in any way.
Importantly, people are not notified when you mute their status updates. There is no indication to them that you have muted them. From their perspective, it will seem like you are simply not viewing their statuses, which is a very common thing on WhatsApp. Unless you tell them directly, they have no way of knowing you’ve muted them specifically.
How to Mute Someone’s Status
Muting someone’s status updates is easy to do right from their chat window:
- Open the chat window for the contact whose status you want to mute.
- Tap the name or profile picture at the top of the chat.
- This will open their contact info. Tap “Mute status updates.”
That’s it! Now you will no longer see this person’s status updates.
You can unmute them at any time by going back into their contact info and tapping “Unmute status updates.”
Does Muting Status Prevent Them from Seeing Yours?
No, muting someone on WhatsApp does not prevent them from seeing your status updates. Muting is one-directional, meaning you stop seeing their content, but what you post is still visible to them as normal.
Unless you block a contact completely, they will still have access to view your profile picture, “about” information, and any status updates you post. Muting only controls what shows up in your feed.
So if you mute someone but still post statuses occasionally, that person will be able to view and interact with your status updates as usual. They just won’t know that you have muted them specifically.
Can You See Their Statuses If You Want To?
Even though muted statuses don’t show up in your main status feed, you can still view a muted contact’s updates manually if you want to.
To see their status updates:
- Open the chat window for the muted contact.
- Tap their name or profile picture at the top.
- This will open their profile info. Tap “Status” here to view their current status update.
So muting doesn’t completely hide their statuses from you or block you from accessing their profile. You just have to intentionally view their profile to see their latest status rather than it automatically appearing in your feed.
What Happens When You Mute Someone?
Here’s a quick rundown of exactly what happens when you mute a contact’s status updates on WhatsApp:
- Their status updates no longer appear in your main Status tab where you view friends’ updates.
- You will not get notifications when they post a new status.
- Any replies or reactions you may have sent to their statuses in the past will no longer be visible.
- You can still manually view their current status by checking their contact profile.
- The contact is not notified or indicated in any way that you muted them.
- They can still view and react to your status updates as normal.
- You can unmute them at any time to resume seeing their status updates.
So in summary, muting allows you to avoid seeing someone’s status posts without fully disconnecting from them as a contact. It’s like turning off notifications for just that one person’s updates.
Why Would You Mute Someone’s Status?
Here are some common reasons you may want to mute a contact’s status updates:
- They post too frequently and clutter up your status feed.
- Their updates are irrelevant or uninteresting to you.
- You want to avoid spoilers for a show you both watch.
- You are connected professionally but want to limit personal updates.
- You are only temporarily interested in their updates.
- Their posts have questionable or controversial content.
- You want to reduce social media overload and notifications.
- Their statuses distract you or affect your productivity.
In summary, muting can help clean up your status feed and lets you take control over what content you see from your contacts. It’s useful for reducing distractions, avoiding spoilers, focusing your feed, and limiting overload.
Pros of Muting Status
Some benefits of muting someone’s status include:
- Avoids frequent/excessive updates from cluttering your feed.
- Lets you avoid spoilers of shows, sports games, etc.
- Gives you more control over your status feed content.
- Reduces social media overload and notifications.
- Allows you to focus feed on updates you care about.
- Can help eliminate distracting or irrelevant statuses.
- Is temporary – you can unmute at any time.
More Discrete Than Unfollowing
Muting only affects your feed rather than their ability to post updates. So it avoids directly unfollowing, blocking or removing a contact which could create social issues.
Cons of Muting Status
Some potential downsides of muting status include:
- You may miss important or interesting updates if you don’t check.
- Creates more work if you still want to check muted statuses.
- Contact may notice if you don’t like/react to statuses.
- Can’t selectively mute – it’s all or nothing for one contact.
- Doesn’t offer an explanation to the contact.
So while muting can be useful in many cases, it also requires some maintenance on your end if you still want to view certain contacts’ updates. There is also the risk that a contact may notice you are not interacting even though you can still see their posts.
Muting Status vs. Blocking a Contact
Muting someone’s status updates is different and less severe than completely blocking a contact:
| Muting Status | Blocking a Contact |
|---|---|
| Only mutes status updates | Blocks all communication with contact |
| Their profile/info is still visible | Makes their profile invisible to you |
| Temporary action | Permanent unless you unblock them |
| No notification to the user | Sends them an unfollow notification |
| You can still view statuses manually | Completely removes access to their profile |
So in summary, muting status is more discreet and focused specifically on status posts, while blocking cuts off access to that contact entirely.
Conclusion
Muting status updates on WhatsApp simply removes that contact’s status posts from your feed so you don’t see them. The contact is not notified in any way, and muting does not prevent them from seeing or interacting with your status as normal. It is a unilateral action that gives you more control over your own feed.
Some reasons to mute status include avoiding excess posts from frequents statuses, eliminating irrelevant or distracting updates from your field of view, and focusing your status feed more narrowly on the contacts you care about most. Just keep in mind muting requires manually checking profiles to see updates, and could make it obvious if you stop liking posts.
FAQs About Muting Status
Here are some frequently asked questions about WhatsApp’s status muting feature:
Can I mute someone’s status just temporarily?
Yes, muting is temporary and reversible, so you can mute someone’s status for a short time period if you want to. For example, you could mute someone for just a day to avoid spoilers for a show, or mute a friend going on vacation to reduce update overload. Just remember to go back into their contact info and unmute them when desired.
What if I still want to see certain updates from a muted contact?
You can manually view the profile and current status of muted contacts at any time. So if there are certain updates you want to check in on, you can still view their status on demand rather than having every update show in your feed automatically.
Can I mute group statuses or just individual contacts?
Unfortunately WhatsApp does not currently let you mute an entire group’s status updates. You can only mute statuses on a per contact basis. So in group chats you would have to mute each member separately that you want to avoid seeing updates from.
What happens if I post statuses while someone is muted?
Your status updates will still be visible to muted contacts. Muting only stops you from seeing their posts, it does not block them from seeing your profile and statuses. Unless you individually block contacts, they can interact with your status normally while muted.
Can I find out who has muted my status updates?
There is no way to detect who has muted your statuses unfortunately. Since muting happens silently in the background without notification, you have no insight into who has specifically muted your updates vs. just not viewing them. The only way to know is if someone tells you directly.
Is muting contacts better or worse than unfollowing them?
It depends on the situation. Muting is more subtle and focused only on status updates. But unfollowing might be better if you want to completely divorce that contact’s entire profile from your feed. Overall muting has less social implications in most cases, since the contact isn’t notified or blocked entirely.
Key Takeaways
Some key points to remember about muting status on WhatsApp:
- Muting removes someone’s status updates from your feed.
- They are not notified or aware you muted them.
- You can manually view muted statuses if desired.
- The contact can still see and interact with your status.
- Useful for reducing clutter or avoiding spoilers.
- More subtle than blocking or unfollowing someone.
- You can reverse the mute at any time.
- Lets you customize feed with updates you care about.
So in summary, muting gives you control over your status feed without severing connections or causing social friction. It’s a simple way to curate the updates you see on WhatsApp.