WhatsApp is one of the most used instant messaging apps with over two billion monthly active users and its popularity is only going to rise with more people coming on the internet everyday and turning to Whatsapp, among a few other messaging apps, to fulfil their communication needs.
Whatsapp not only allows you to send a message to your contacts, but also voice or video call them and send them media, including photos, videos, GIFs, documents and even your live location.
Among these nifty features, there is one more that really helps (or doesn’t; depending on the situation) people, called Last Seen. The feature was introduced on Whatsapp in 2015 and has since been used extensively by everyone. It allows other users to a timestamp that depicts when the user was last online on WhatsApp.
If the user is already online, others will see the ‘online’ status instead of last seen, which means the user is currently using Whatsapp.
Also read: How to export your WhatsApp chat history to PC from Android and iPhone?
What happens when you turn off your last seen on WhatsApp?
You can change your privacy settings as per your need on Whatsapp. It allows you to turn off the ‘last seen’ status. You can customise who can see you last seen by choosing everybody, contacts or nobody from the in-app settings.,
The option you choose will apply to you too. For example, if you choose “Everybody” then everyone who has saved your number as a contact on their phone will be able to see your last seen status and vice versa. If you set it to “My contacts” then only the people saved in your phone’s contacts will be able to see your last seen status and vice versa. If you set it to “Nobody” then no one will be able to see your last seen and vice versa.
If you want to know how to turn off your last seen then check out our article here.
On Whatsapp, you cannot hide your online status, even if you turn off your last seen. Whenever you are using the app, anybody who is viewing your profile or their chat window with you will be able to see that you are online and also during chatting, the usual “Typing” badge will appear too.
If you are unable to see the last seen status of anybody from your contact list even if you haven’t turned your last seen status off, then you might have blocked them by mistake or they might have blocked you.
