Initially intended for the exchange of private messages, WhatsApp has also become a professional tool. As such, the instant messaging application may contain confidential discussions that can be viewed by third parties accidentally or on purpose. To keep your conversations private, it is possible to hide them. How do you do this?
Archive conversations
WhatsApp has a feature that allows you to store your conversations in an archive folder. All archived conversations disappear from the conversation thread and are only accessible in this folder. Archiving can be done in two ways:
- archiving from the conversation thread;
- archiving from the settings.
archiving from the conversation thread
This archiving mode works like a shortcut. It is especially recommended when you only want to archive a few discussions from your conversation thread. Just proceed as follows:
- press and hold down on the discussions concerned;
- click on the icon provided for archiving; the discussions will immediately disappear from the conversation thread.
Archiving from the parameters
This procedure is interesting because it allows you to archive all the discussions in your mailbox in a single operation. Here is how to do it:
- Click on the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of the screen in the WhatsApp application.
- In the settings, select “Discussions“.
- Scroll down to the bottom and select “Discussion History“.
- Click “Archive all discussions“, then click “OK” in the pop-up window that opens to confirm the archiving action.
Once the archiving is validated, all your discussions will enter the archive folder and disappear from your conversation thread.
Retrieving an archived conversation
To retrieve an archived conversation, go to the archived discussions folder at the end of the conversation thread, named “Archived“.
In front of the folder, you will see the number of archived conversations. In addition, the archives are sorted by the date they were archived for easy retrieval.
Set up archiving
Once you have archived your most sensitive conversations, the next step is to set up the archiving. WhatsApp allows you to decide if you want to keep your chats archived, when you receive new messages from your recipients. This way, even when an archived chat continues, it remains in the archive, ensuring complete confidentiality.
To set up archiving, you have two options:
- set up archiving from the archive folder;
- set up archiving from the settings.
Set up archiving from the archive folder
- In the folder “Archived“, click on the 3 vertical buttons in the upper right corner of the screen.
- Click on “Archiving settings“.
- Drag the slider in front of “Keep chats archived” to keep conversations hidden in case of new messages.
Set archiving from settings
- Click on the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of the screen in the WhatsApp app.
- In settings, choose “Discussions“.
- Scroll to the bottom and drag the slider in front of “Keep discussions archived” to keep discussions hidden when new messages are exchanged after archiving.