WhatsApp On Android

WhatsApp on Android

WhatsApp is a messaging application that stores very little data on their servers, and is widely used across the globe.

To install WhatsApp on your Android device, open the Google Play store App on your phone, and click Install.

Once it installs, open the app and it will ask you to agree to some terms & conditions.

Next, you will enter the phone number that you will use. You can enter either your cell phone number, or a Google Voice number here:

After you enter your phone number, WhatsApp will send a SMS with a verification code to the phone number to verify that it’s yours. Enter the verification code and click next.

After verifying your number, you will enter a username to use on the service, and the App will ask you if it can access your contacts. You can choose to let it do so, or block it from accessing your contacts.

Settings to configure

Once it is open, should tap the three dots in the top right of the screen to get to the settings menu. It has a red box around it in the screenshot below:

This is what the Settings page looks like:

Chat Settings

Under Settings, choose “Chats” to go to the Chat settings page:

On the Chat settings page, you can click on Chat history to clear or delete any chat history stored in the app.

If you return to the Chat settings page, you will also see an option for Chat backup. You can choose to backup your chats to Google Drive. If you’re using WhatsApp because the service doesn’t retain information, you will want to make sure that backups are not being sent to Google Drive.

Account Settings

From the main settings page, tap on Account.

“Privacy”

Here you can configure who can see your profile picture or the last time you logged into WhatsApp. You can choose to mark these to “contacts only” or “nobody.”

“Security”

Here you can choose to turn on security notifications. A lot has been written about WhatsApp’s key notifications; usually if you get a security notification here it’s not a big deal, but you may still want to enable this.

“Two-step verification”

This setting allows you to set a passcode that you’ll need to enter if you use WhatsApp on a new device.

“Delete my account”

This option will allow you to delete your WhatsApp account.

Notifications

Depending how you use WhatsApp, you may want to turn off message previews. To do that, from the Settings page choose “Notifications” and then find “popup notification.” Set it to “No popup.”

On the same page, set the “popup notification” under “Group Notifications” to “No popup.”

Using WhatsApp

To send a message, you can tap on contacts and find the person you want to send a message to. Enter your message on the screen that pops up, and tap send.

From here, you are ready to start chatting!

If you need help finding your friends and adding them, WhatsApp has a guide to adding your friends as contacts on Android