Have you recently taken a look at your WhatsApp contact list? Try, scroll and tell us how many people you find that you don’t even recognize anymore or that you simply don’t even know who they are. Surely many! The messaging application is essential in our lives and we’ve been using it for so long that most likely the contact list has become a cemetery of forgotten friendships. Why don’t we clean it up a bit?
WhatsApp debuted in Spain in 2009 and became popular in 2012. It is more than likely that you have been using the tool ever since. That’s a long time to accumulate and accumulate contacts of people you may have talked to before or have talked to for some specific reason at a certain point in your life. Bearing this in mind, it is best that you apply some very simple instructions to clean the list and thus have the app a little more organized.
on iPhone
Deletion is simple, but then you will have to do one more thing to finish cleaning your WhatsApp: delete the conversations. With the iPhone in your hands, apply the following steps:
- After opening WhatsApp, click on Chats in the bottom navigation bar.
- Now tap on “New chat”, an option that is in the upper right corner. Don’t worry, because you’re not going to start a conversation this way.
- Find the contact you want to delete. It is comfortable, because they are arranged in groups alphabetically.
- Click on the name of the contact to delete and then within the chat window tap on “Edit”.
- Now you just have to go down to the end and choose “Delete contact”.
Then enter the list of conversations and you will see that the name of the WhatsApp contacts that you have deleted will no longer appear, only their phone number. From there you will have to open the chat, click on the user icon and then scroll down where it says “Empty chat”. With that, you will have deleted it and both the contact and the chat will have disappeared from your WhatsApp.
on android
Users who have a mobile with the Google system will have it a little easier. What you have to do is the following:
- Open the application and tap on the Chats section.
- Click on “New chat” and then select the contact you want to delete.
- In the upper area, tap on the name of the contact and then enter “More options”.
- After that you just have to click on “View in the contact book”, enter “More options” and then touch “Delete”.
All you have to do after that is an update of the entire contact list, for which we recommend that you do it when you have finished with the cleaning in its entirety. From WhatsApp you will have to enter “New chat” again and then “More options” and finally “Update”.
Why delete old contacts?
The first reason is to bring order and organize the application a bit, but it is obvious that sometimes it is not a sufficient reason to make the effort. What you can take into account is that having a WhatsApp agenda with many contacts that you do not know or from people with whom you no longer have relationships it can give you security problems. After all, they will be users who could have access to your login information, your status update or the photo you put on your profile. Also, you should keep in mind that it is often common to talk to people at specific times, such as a Wallapop seller or someone with whom you have carried out some type of action. These contacts could end up being a problem.
It is also important that you review your schedule because there may be people you don’t recognize. If the number has been reused, you could end up having people with whom you have never had contact. Therefore, it is recommended that you do cleaning. Another important reason is that it will help your mobile to better manage its performance. Normally it doesn’t have to be a problem, but if you have a lot of useless contacts you’d be taking up precious memory that you’d like to recover, especially if your mobile is very old.
Therefore, it is recommended keep your whatsapp clean and thus avoid having conversations from years ago that have not gone anywhere and that do not help the stability of your application. If you want, you can also delete contacts from your phone’s phonebook, which is a workaround and something we also recommend doing.