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WhatsApp has a ‘secret menu’ hidden in the app icon and this is what you can do with it

WhatsApp continues to evolve update after update, adding many features that make it increasingly robust and versatile, but the truth is that there are options that have been there almost forever and it is also convenient to advertise them. Not only because they are practical, but because many users may not be aware of them yet, since WhatsApp itself does little to communicate that they exist.

One of these features, one of the most useful that we find in WhatsApp, lies in the fact that we have a kind of ‘secret menu’, one that it hides in the icon of the app itself and that we can easily activate with a medium press. Neither short, so that it is a touch, nor long so that the icon is hooked to our finger to move it around the desktop. A medium press and voila, ‘secret menu’ open.

Quick access in the ‘secret menu’ of WhatsApp

In this WhatsApp menu that, as we say, opens with a medium press on the app icon on our mobile, we we found some pretty useful shortcuts to be able to perform tasks without having to open the app first. For example, this drop-down menu that opens above the icon will contain quick access to the last three conversations in which we have interacted, the three most recent in our app.

A touch on these conversations will allow us to open them directly, but if we also keep our finger pressed on them we will be able to create a shortcut to the conversation and place it anywhere on our desktop (something that WhatsApp also allows and that is barely advertised). But not only do we have access to the latest conversations in the ‘secret menu’ of WhatsApp, other functions appear in it.

Whatsapphttps://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86g3u3

Shortcuts to the last three conversations, widgets, the camera and even pause the app for the rest of the day.

For example, in this menu we find a shortcut to the camera so we can take a quick picture to share with any of our conversations. And as in the case of chats, we can also turn it into a shortcut on the desktop. We also have direct access to the widgets to place any of them on the desktop, from the one with the camera that we mentioned before to the 4×2 one that shows the conversations.

Conversations can be dragged directly from the secret menu to the desktop to create shortcuts.

And finally, at the top of this ‘secret menu’ we will find two icons. One of them looks like a sand clock and it will serve us to pause the app, to freeze it and stop it from working for the rest of the day (or until we unfreeze it). The other looks like an info button and takes us to the app info on our phone from where we can uninstall it, check what version it is updated to and more.

All this can be done on WhatsApp no need to open the app first, simply leaving your finger pressed on the icon and displaying this ‘secret menu’ that offers us quick access to chats, camera, widgets and freezing the app so that it stops notifying us. PS: Some options may vary depending on what version of Android you have and what layer of customization. Our tests are done on a Pixel with Android 12.

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