Do you know WhatsApp "Secret Codes"? Find out how to protect your chats
Are you afraid that your smartphone will fall into the wrong hands? WhatsApp now offers you a range of tools to enhance the security of your most sensitive messages. Learn about the app's "Secret Codes" feature and how to use it.
Our conversations, photos and audio messages on WhatsApp messenger are sometimes very sensitive and confidential, including personal and even financial information. We would like to prevent those who are not supposed to sneak into them, and WhatsApp is introducing more and more functions to make us feel safer when sending and receiving messages. Recently, with the View Once feature, it has become possible to send one-time text and voice messages, which are marked with a "one-time" icon and can only be played once before being erased.
Since May 2023, WhatsApp has introduced Chat Lock, a useful feature that allows users to protect conversations using only their fingerprints and faces. However, for many of us, the method of protecting correspondence using biometrics seems a little difficult and requires additional effort, while most of us are accustomed to using passwords, traditional technique to access our private information and accounts. A few weeks ago the Meta company, the owner of WhatsApp, gave us this opportunity and now you can hide your conversations behind a previously created password. This new feature is called "Secret Codes".
"Secret codes" feature allow you to create unique passwords that are different from the ones your phone requires when unlocking. According to the developers, this way correspondence will be protected, even if someone has gained access to your smartphone.
Here's the step-by-step instructions on how to set and activate secret codes to protect your sensitive messages. To create a "secret code", you need to close at least one chat.
- Open the WhatsApp app on your smartphone.
- Select and long-press the chat you'd like to protect with a secret code.
- Tap "Lock Chat" and then "Continue".
- Open the Chat Lock Settings.
- Set up your secret code. You can use letters, numbers, signed and even emojis.
- When you want to find your chat, search your secret code in the search bar.
Done! Now you will not longer see locked chats on the main screen of the app.
Important! You should always remember your secret codes in order to be able to access your conversations.
It is very easy to find your protected chats. Everything is simple and you don't need to go into Settings. After hiding blocked chats from your chat list, you can find them at any moment by entering the secret code in the search bar. However, you can still include selected chats in your chat list if you wish.