We have sung the praises of WhatsApp before on this site. While the messaging scene is unpopular in the United States and Canada, where iMessage and Facebook Messenger are dominated, WhatsApp’s own messaging client – which is owned by Facebook – is a powerful tool that manages to copy the simplicity of SMS. and text messaging and allows more advanced technologies such as simultaneous read receipts, advanced group messaging, and typing notifications to let your friends know that someone has typed to reply. These developments are welcomed by WhatsApp users all over the world, especially in Europe, South America and Africa, where the popularity of the messaging client has reached more than one billion people worldwide. Because WhatsApp has clients for Android, iOS, and the web, it’s much more accessible than other apps like iMessage.
This makes WhatsApp an incredibly useful app for sending messages to friends and family around the world without having to pay for an SMS plan in addition to your data. One of the best additions to WhatsApp is a powerful group messaging tool that makes it easy to message your friends at once instead of keeping separate conversations for different people. However, there comes a time in every WhatsApp user’s life when it’s time to distribute a group message. This may be because your friend group has dispersed or you are using WhatsApp for a work or class group project, it makes sense to delete and distribute groups that are no longer needed.
But if you’ve never had to delete a group message before, WhatsApp doesn’t immediately explain how. Unlike an SMS thread where deleting a group message simply deletes the message from your phone, deleting a group message from WhatsApp also removes the group and associated messages from WhatsApp servers. Therefore, not everyone in a group message can delete messages from their end; otherwise you have people constantly deleting content that doesn’t need to be deleted by other group members. This does not mean, of course, that a group cannot be deleted. Let’s take a look at how to delete group chats within WhatsApp.
Group Administrators
Every group on WhatsApp has a “group manager”. This person is a little different from the other members of the group chat. First, they usually started the group chat to get started, i.e. they added members to the chat. Admins within WhatsApp can add or remove members from a group at any time, making it easy for them to manage the discussion and dialogue that takes place at any time. This makes it easier to manage the general discussion of a group chat and makes it easy to keep things on track without excessive distractions. Group administrators can appoint additional administrators as they see fit, but making each member of a group an administrator is not recommended. Otherwise, you may be risking a general abuse of power from members within the group, especially when conversations begin to grow to large populations. However, an unlimited number of participants in a group can be group admins, so if you have four people in a chat and you want all of them to have the ability to add or remove people, all four users can be admin members. Admins also have the authority to invite new members to the group via a link.
While any participant can exit a group chat, only administrators of a group chat can delete the entire group chat. Therefore, if you are a group member of only one chat, you cannot delete the group. Fortunately, leaving a group chat works almost the same as deleting a group chat, but it doesn’t actually make the chat inoperable without you. If you want to exit a group chat and see what it means, we have a separate article on the differences between exiting and deleting a group chat on WhatsApp.
If you’re a group admin within WhatsApp, you can certainly delete the group chat, but deleting the chat makes the chat disappear not just for you but for everyone involved. Considering that a WhatsApp chat can have up to 256 participants, this can be disastrous for the conversation taking place at any given time, so before deleting a group chat with several hundred members, consider what is at stake for the group and the dialog. obtain. It might be an even better idea to consult other group admin members and group participants to discuss the complete deletion of the group from WhatsApp.
Deleting Groups on WhatsApp
Assuming you are a group admin, once you reach an agreement to delete a group within WhatsApp, you have to start a long process of completely kicking the group members out of the chat. Unlike other apps, a chat in WhatsApp can only be deleted when members are completely empty. Depending on the size of the group, this can take a serious time commitment. To remove members from the group, enter the group chat inside WhatsApp, tap the subject of the group at the top of your screen, then tap and hold the participant you want to remove from the group. This will open a prompt on your screen for options for the group participant. Tap Uninstall [name]From the menu on your screen. You will have to do this manually for each member, which may take some time for some groups depending on their size and capacity.
After removing each member from the group, you will have to leave the group yourself. From the Chats tab in your instance of WhatsApp, find the group chat you want to permanently delete, then tap and hold the group chat name (on iOS you will scroll without long pressing), select the menu icon (on Android) and select “Leave Group”. After your selection, you will see the option to delete the group chat if you are the only remaining group member. Tap the delete icon to remove the group, permanently delete the chat from both your device and WhatsApp as a whole.
Deleting Group Chat Logs from Your Phone Without Admin Status
Although the only way to completely delete groups from WhatsApp is to become a group admin and remove all members from the group, you can delete the actual log from your phone even if you are only a participant. Basically, while the group chat will continue on its own without you in the group, you will still be able to leave the group and remove the actual chat thread from your phone, essentially “deleting” it from your device without having to delete it. chat completely. Let’s have a look.
Although participants in a group chat do not have as much power as the group admins, they have the option to leave a chat they do not want to join at any time. Likewise, leaving a group chat will give you options to delete the entire chat log from your WhatsApp account so you will never be a member of the group initially. To do this, open the chat interface inside WhatsApp and find the group you want to leave. On Android, hold the thread, and on iOS, slide your finger along the edge of the thread to open the interface. Tap “Menu” on the Android version of the app and “More” on iOS, then select “Leave Group”. Although you will be leaving the group, you will need to delete the chat from your phone. To do this, hold or swipe your finger across the thread again as you did before. Select “Menu” or “More” again and then select “Delete Group” followed by a “Delete Group” confirmation. This doesn’t actually remove the group chat, but removes the character log from your device.
***
While being an admin in the group is the only way to delete group chats from WhatsApp is a bit annoying, it makes a lot of practical sense. Without this limitation, anyone can kick all members from the group and delete the chat without any restrictions, causing a pandemic in group chats worldwide and creating a complete lack of order. However, if you are a group admin and have the authority to delete existing group chats on the platform, you will want to use this power wisely. For most members, including core participants, it’s better to delete the chat from your phone after leaving the group chat. This can be done even if you are the admin because WhatsApp will automatically select a new group admin for you. However, if you are sure that you want to delete the chat permanently and you have time to delete the entire member log in a group, WhatsApp makes it easy to permanently remove the group chat from the service.
