You have been using WhatsApp for years. You send messages, make calls, share photos, and maybe post a status once in a while. But if that is the full extent of how you use the app, you are genuinely leaving a lot on the table.
WhatsApp has quietly evolved into one of the most feature-rich communication platforms in the world. In 2025 alone, it rolled out AI-powered tools, advanced privacy controls, multi-device upgrades, and a handful of features that most users scroll right past without realising they exist.
This guide is your shortcut to the good stuff. These are the WhatsApp features worth knowing, and once you start using them, going back to basic messaging will feel like a downgrade.
Lock Individual Chats With a PIN or Biometrics
Most people rely on their phone’s screen lock as the only barrier protecting their WhatsApp chats. But what happens when someone else picks up your already-unlocked phone?
WhatsApp now lets you lock individual chats using a PIN, fingerprint, or Face ID. Locked chats disappear from your main chat list entirely and sit behind an authentication screen. Nobody scrolling through your phone will even see them unless they know exactly where to look.
To set it up, open any chat, tap the contact or group name at the top, scroll down and select Lock Chat, then choose your preferred authentication method. It works on both Android and iPhone and takes about 30 seconds to activate.
This is particularly useful for sensitive work conversations, personal chats, or anything you simply prefer to keep private, especially in a household where your phone gets passed around.
Use WhatsApp Across Multiple Devices Without Your Phone
For a long time, WhatsApp required your primary phone to stay connected and online for it to work on other devices. That limitation is fully gone in 2025.
WhatsApp now supports up to four additional linked devices, including tablets, laptops, and secondary phones, that operate completely independently of your main phone. Your primary device can be switched off, out of battery, or without internet, and your linked devices will still send, receive, and sync messages in real time.
To link a device, go to Settings, tap Linked Devices, then tap Link a Device and follow the prompts. End-to-end encryption is maintained across every linked device, so your privacy does not take a hit.
For anyone who works across multiple screens or frequently moves between a phone and laptop, this feature alone is worth the update.
Fine-Tune Your Privacy Settings Beyond the Basics
Most people know they can hide their Last Seen or turn off read receipts. WhatsApp has gone significantly further than that in 2025, and the controls are now granular enough to manage visibility on a contact-by-contact basis.
Here is what is available under Settings > Privacy right now:
Last Seen and Online Status: You can choose who sees when you were last active and whether you appear as online. The options are Everyone, My Contacts, My Contacts Except, and Nobody, giving you precise control over who sees what.
Read Receipts: Turn these off and the blue ticks stop appearing for others when you read their messages. Worth noting: if you turn this off, you will also stop seeing read receipts from others.
Who Can Add You to Groups: This is one of the most underused settings on WhatsApp. Go to Settings > Privacy > Groups and set this to My Contacts or My Contacts Except to stop strangers from adding you to groups without permission.
Advanced Security Mode: Found under Settings > Privacy > Advanced, this is a single switch that activates multiple protections at once. It restricts file attachments and link previews from unknown contacts, routes calls through WhatsApp servers to hide your IP address, and enforces two-step verification. For anyone who values their digital security, this is worth enabling immediately.
Set Messages to Disappear Automatically
Disappearing messages let you set a timer on your conversations so they automatically delete after a set period. The available durations are 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days.
You can enable this for individual chats by opening the chat, tapping the contact name at the top, selecting Disappearing Messages, and choosing your preferred duration. You can also set a default timer for all new chats by going to Settings > Privacy > Default Message Timer.
This is a clean way to manage storage, keep sensitive conversations tidy, and add a layer of privacy to personal or professional chats without having to manually clear them.
Format Your Text Like a Pro
WhatsApp supports text formatting, and a surprising number of people have never used it. A few simple shortcuts change how your messages look and land.
Type an asterisk on each side of a word to make it bold. Use underscores on each side to make it italic. Add a tilde on each side to apply strikethrough. Use three backticks on each side to apply monospace formatting, useful for sharing code snippets or technical text.
On the app, you can also highlight text after typing it and select formatting options directly from the pop-up menu that appears, so you do not need to remember the shortcuts.
These are small touches, but they make a real difference in long messages, announcements in groups, or any situation where emphasis and clarity matter.
Pin Messages Inside Chats
If a group or chat gets busy, important information drowns quickly in the scroll. WhatsApp lets you pin up to three messages at the top of any chat so they stay visible regardless of how much activity happens below.
To pin a message, press and hold it, tap the three-dot menu that appears, and select Pin. You can choose how long to pin it, 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days, depending on how long the information is relevant.
This is excellent for pinning event details in a group, a shared address, an important link, or any piece of information people will need to refer back to repeatedly.
AI-Powered Message Summaries for Busy Group Chats
This is one of the most practically useful additions WhatsApp has introduced in 2025. For users in markets where Meta AI is available, WhatsApp can now generate a concise summary of unread messages in a busy group chat, so you can catch up on a 300-message thread without reading every single one.
The feature is accessible within the chat itself and uses on-device processing to maintain privacy. It is particularly useful for work groups, community chats, and event planning threads where conversations move fast.
Availability varies by region and is rolling out progressively across Android and iPhone. Check your app’s Settings or the chat overflow menu to see if it is live on your device yet.
Star Important Messages for Fast Retrieval
Every now and then, someone sends you an address, a bank account number, a meeting link, or a piece of information you know you will need again. The star feature is built exactly for this.
Press and hold any message, tap the star icon, and it gets saved to a dedicated folder. To access all your starred messages at any time, go to Settings on iPhone or tap the three dots on Android and select Starred Messages. Everything you have ever starred across all chats appears in one searchable list.
It is a deceptively simple feature that saves a significant amount of time once you make it a habit.
WhatsApp is carrying a lot more functionality than most people ever explore. From locking sensitive chats and managing multi-device access to setting messages to disappear and using AI to catch up on group conversations, these features are built to make your experience faster, safer, and more organised.
The best part is that none of these require any technical knowledge. They are all sitting inside the app you already have. All it takes is a few minutes of exploring the settings to find them.
Which of these features are you trying first? And is there a WhatsApp tip you already swear by that we did not cover? Drop it in the comments below. We would love to hear from the TechCityNG community!
