WhatsApp recently introduced a new feature that automatically sends read receipts to the sender once the recipient has seen the message. Showing in the form of two blue check marks as seen in this screenshot above, this new feature could potentially raise privacy concerns for some users. If you don’t want your contacts to know whether you’ve read their messages or not, there are a couple ways to disable WhatsApp read receipts.
WhatsApp Read Receipt Disabler tweak
A new tweak available in Cydia for jailbroken devices allows you to automatically hide read receipts. Well, to be more specific, it doesn’t show read receipts on the sender’s side of the conversation. All the sender will see is the two grey check marks that indicate the message was delivered successfully.
This tweak is all or nothing though, as it doesn’t allow you to hide read receipts on a per contact basis, but instead disables receipts for all conversations you have. If your iOS device is jailbroken, this is currently the best way to hide the fact that you read the WhatsApp message you were just sent.
WhatsApp Read Receipt Disabler is free in Cydia’s BigBoss repo.
Manual workaround to not send read receipts
This second option will appeal to iOS users who don’t have a jailbroken device. This method, shared by TCPB, clearly is a very impractical workaround, but it gets the job done.
Step 1: When you receive a new notification telling you you received a message, turn Airplane Mode on.
Step 2: Open WhatsApp and read the message.
Step 3: Quit the conversation.
Step 4: Turn Airplane Mode off.
At that point, if you go back in the conversation while you have an active internet connection, the read receipt will be sent, so this is definitely not a permanent solution.
I wouldn’t be surprised if WhatsApp added a feature to disable those read receipts in the future, but in the meantime, these two tricks will have to do.