WhatsApp update lets you hide your last seen status – here's how

WhatsApp is easily one of the best messaging services around, especially if you live outside of the US, where everyone seems to use iMessage. 

Fast, easy to use, and secure through end-to-end encryption, we can't get enough of WhatsApp and all of the years of group chats, casual acquaintances, and everyone else that ends up in your message list. 

But one annoying thing that WhatsApp does is make it very, very easy for people to see when you were last online – not ideal for a large segment of your contacts. 

Luckily, in a recent update, WhatsApp has seen the light and added the ability to hide your last seen status from selected contacts. 

To do so, go to Settings > Account > Privacy and choose either Last Seen or Profile Picture as the options. From there, select My Contacts Except... and go wild, choosing anyone you do or don't want to see your status. Once you're finished, click Done. 

It's really that simple.

The only slightly annoying thing is because this is an exclusion-based list, any new contact that you don't want seeing your last seen status – a promising date, for example – will need to be manually added each time.

Competition in messaging

Despite is hugely dominant position, WhatsApp needs to continually innovate to avoid being replaced by a huge host of messaging rivals, from iMessage to Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Discord, and so on.

Meta has simultaneously been having to balance the need to make money from WhatsApp – which likely has huge ongoing costs given its scale – without placing ads all over the service.

To do so, WhatsApp has rolled out several business-focused features that let customers interact with merchants without leaving the app.

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