Key Takeaways
- WhatsApp has a variety of features, some easy to find and others hidden. It's important to keep up with new features to make the most out of the messaging app.
- You can hide your WhatsApp profile picture from specific contacts or everyone by adjusting the privacy settings. This can be useful in certain situations, such as not wanting certain people to see your picture.
- Hiding your profile picture doesn't affect your ability to send and receive messages. Instead, those selected as exempt will see a grey circle with a person icon in place of your picture.
WhatsApp offers a number of features, some of which are nice and easy to find, while others require you to dive a little deeper into the messaging app. Even when you think you know everything there is to know about WhatsApp, the platform adds a bunch of new features that you need to learn to get the most out of it. The messaging app allows you to hide your last seen for example, react to messages with emoji and you can even change the wallpaper for each contact if you want to. Then you have features like Voice Chats that is designed to be a way to communicate with your voice within a WhatsApp group less obtrusively than WhatsApp Group Calling.
We've covered off our favourite WhatsApp tips and tricks in our separate feature above, but here we are focusing on a tip that we love.
Do you know it's possible to hide your WhatsApp profile picture from individuals or specific contacts? It might be that you don't want a certain person or certain people to see your picture, or maybe you want to give the impression that you've blocked someone to teach them a little lesson, but you don't actually want to block them as then you won't know if they message you.
How to hide your WhatsApp profile picture from specific people
If you're looking to hide your WhatsApp profile picture from a specific individual, or in general, we can help you. Follow the steps below to hide your WhatsApp profile picture from individual contacts, but do remember that you'll need to follow these steps each time you want to add a specific individual to your hidden profile picture view. This feature is available on both iOS and Android devices.
- Open the WhatsApp app
- Tap on the Settings tab in the bottom right corner
- Tap Privacy
- Tap on Profile Picture
- Tap on My Contacts Except...
- Choose any contacts you don't want to see your WhatsApp profile picture
- Tap on Done in the top right corner
How to hide your WhatsApp profile picture from everyone
It might be that hiding your WhatsApp profile picture from specific contacts isn't enough, and actually you just want to hide it from everyone, or those not within your contact list, for example. If you want to hide your WhatsApp profile picture from everyone, follow the steps below.
- Open the WhatsApp app
- Tap on the Settings tab in the bottom right corner
- Tap Privacy
- Tap on Profile Picture
- Tap on Nobody
- Tap on Done in the top right corner
If you want only your contacts to see your profile picture, follow steps 1-4 and then select My Contacts.
What happens when you hide your WhatsApp profile picture?
For when you hide your profile picture from specific people, you'll still be able to send and receive messages with the contacts you select as normal. The same applies when you hide your profile picture from everyone. In place of your picture, they will see a grey circle with a person icon, which is the same thing that happens if someone blocks you from WhatsApp, only in that case, messages and calls won't go through.
It's a handy feature to know, and there are a number of reasons why you would perhaps consider doing it. We mentioned in the introduction how you might want it to be perceived that you have blocked someone without actually blocking them, but it is also good if you have your children in your WhatsApp photo, and you don't want people within a group to see them, for example. For the latter, we would recommend selecting only your contacts to see your WhatsApp profile picture, so anyone you don't know in a WhatsApp group you have been added to will not be able to see them.
What other WhatsApp tips are worth checking out?
If you liked this tip, then there are plenty more within our tips and tricks feature. For example, you can send a live location to a contact in WhatsApp, which is great if you're meeting a friend, and you're running a little late. We use this one quite a lot, not because we are always late, but because it is perfect for when you and your friend are coming from different places, and you want to see how close the other one is to your meeting point.
Other tips we love are the ability to search all your chats or search within individual chats, which we have found extra handy when we are looking for an address someone has sent us in the past, for instance. We also like the ability to review and delete items to help clear storage and a bit of wallpaper changing for a fresh look always makes for a nice change. If you want to be a WhatsApp whizz, you know where you need to be heading.