Group chats are the bane of most WhatsApp users’ existence. Just when you put your phone down, your mates decide to solve world hunger, the nuclear proliferation problem, and the unconscionable decision to push Game of Thrones’ final season back to 2019. Here’s how to get a handle on all those notifications.
While we’ve already looked at how to mute group chats for eight hours, one week, or one year, that’s more of a blunt fix for a specific group chat that’s getting out of hand in the short term rather than a reasonable solution. If instead, you want to tame all group chats, you need to change how WhatsApp notifies you of new group messages.
Open WhatsApp and head to Settings > Notifications. Here’s what it looks like on iOS.
And on Android.
There are a couple of different things you can do here. For example, you can change the notification sound by selecting Sound on iOS (left, below) or Notification Tone on Android (right, below) under Group Notifications. On iOS, you also have another option. If you turn off Show Notifications, you won’t even get a popup when you get a group message. This is probably a bit much though, unless you’re in no groups you care about.
Select a new tone (including “None”), and then hit “Save” or “OK.”
If you select None, you’ll still get a notification when you get a group message, but it won’t make a sound. That’s a pretty good fix if you’re just looking to not be annoyed by a dinging phone all the time. Alternatively, you can select a different notification tone. This way, you’ll still get a sound alert when you get a group message, but you’ll be able to tell it’s probably not urgent.