Technology Desk: Almost every smartphone user uses WhatsApp today. Many times there are such personal chats which people want to keep away from the eyes of others. Especially when the phone falls into the hands of friends, family members or any other person. In such a situation, it is not necessary to lock the entire WhatsApp app. If you want, you can lock only your selected personal and group chats.
For this, Chat Lock feature has been provided in WhatsApp. With its help, you can keep any special conversation in a separate Locked Chats folder. Not only this, this folder can also be completely hidden from your main chat list. After this, no one will be able to open those chats easily without your permission. Let us know the complete method to activate this feature of WhatsApp.
What is WhatsApp Chat Lock and how does it work?
WhatsApp's Chat Lock feature is designed to provide users with additional security for their selected conversations. After activating it, the concerned chat gets removed from the normal chat list and goes into a separate Locked Chats folder.
To open this folder, the phone's authentication system has to be used. This may include fingerprint, face recognition or the phone's passcode. The special thing is that this feature can be used for individual chat as well as group chat.
Another special feature of this feature is notification privacy. When a new message arrives in a locked chat, the sender's name and message preview are not visible in the notification. With this, anyone else looking at the phone screen will not be able to read your conversation.
How to lock any personal chat on WhatsApp?
If you also want to keep any of your special conversations hidden from others, then you will have to follow some easy steps for this.
First of all open WhatsApp in your smartphone. After this select the individual or group chat you want to lock. Now go to the Chat Info section by tapping on the name of the concerned contact or group.
Here, when you scroll down, you will see the option of Chat Lock. Tap on it and turn on Chat Lock. After this, confirm your identity with the phone's fingerprint, face recognition or passcode.
Once the process is complete, your selected chat will go to the Locked Chats folder. Now authentication will be required to open it.
You can lock a chat even without opening it: In WhatsApp, you can also lock a conversation directly from the chat list. For this, press and hold on the concerned chat for a few seconds and select the lock option available in the menu. However, the location of the options may differ depending on the phone and version of WhatsApp.
You can also hide the Locked Chats folder completely.
This feature of WhatsApp is not limited to just locking chats. If you do not want any other person to see the folder named Locked Chats, then there is also an option to hide it.
For this, first open WhatsApp and swipe the chat list downwards and go to the Locked Chats folder. After this, open the folder and go to Chat Lock Settings.
Now select the option of Secret Code. Set a secret code of your choice here. Keep the code such that other people cannot guess it easily. Confirm by entering it again.
After this, go back to Chat Lock Settings and turn on the option of Hide Locked Chats.
Now the Locked Chats folder will disappear from your main chat list. This means that no other person will be able to open WhatsApp and see this folder in the normal way.
How to reopen a hidden chat?
If you have hidden the Locked Chats folder, it is also easy to access it again.
For this, open WhatsApp and type your secret code in the search bar given at the top. As soon as you enter the code, the option of Locked Chats will appear. By tapping on this you can access your locked conversations.
If you have not hidden the folder, you can also access Locked Chats by swiping down the chat list. After this, identity will have to be confirmed through fingerprint, face recognition or passcode.
Keep these things in mind while using Chat Lock
It is also important to understand some important things while using WhatsApp Chat Lock. First of all remember your secret code. If you forget the code, you may have trouble accessing locked chats.
There may also be an option available in WhatsApp to reset locked chats, but doing so may delete the messages and media in those chats. Therefore, do not use the reset option without complete information.
Another important thing is that locking a person's chat does not block his WhatsApp calls. This means that calls from the contact of the locked chat will continue to come normally.
Therefore, if you want to protect your personal conversations from the eyes of others, then both Chat Lock and Secret Code features can prove useful for you.