WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging platforms. With billions of users worldwide, people use it for both personal and office work. Many like us have accidentally ‘archived’ a group or individual chat just to realise it is no longer appearing in the conversation list.
What is WhatsApp archive?
While the app does feature a ‘Mute Notifications’ option for those who want to no longer receive alerts from a person or a group, the ‘archive’ button hides the conversation from the main chat window without deleting it.
However, you can view them by simply scrolling to the top of the ‘Chats’ tab and tapping on the ‘Archived’ section. By default, archived chats will stay archived even if you get a new message from that individual or group chat.
But you can change this behaviour by heading over to ‘Settings’, tapping on ‘Chat’ and toggling the ‘Keep chats archived’ option. This automatically unarchives the chat when you receive a new message.
How to archive and unarchive chats
If you want to hide a particular chat or don’t want group messages to pop up in the chats tab, you might find the archive feature useful. However, the process to archive and unarchive chats is different on Android and iOS.
If you are using an Android device, long press on the chat you want to hide and tap on the box-like icon with a downward arrow next to the sound icon. This will move the conversation to the archived section.
To unarchive the chat, simply head over to the archived section at the top of the conversation list, long-press on the chat you want to unarchive and press the box icon with the upward arrow and you are good to go.
For those on iOS, swipe left on the chat or group and tap on the box icon with a downward arrow to archive the conversation. Unarchiving a chat requires users to head over to the archive section and swipe left on the chat. Here, tap on the box icon with an upward arrow and your chat will again appear in the WhatsApp chats tab.
Alternatively, you can also search for the conversation you want to archive or unarchive, long press it and WhatsApp will let show you the option to archive or unarchive it.
In case you want to archive all chats, simply head over to the app settings, tap on ‘Chats’, navigate to ‘Chat History’ and you will see an option that says ‘Archive all chats’.
