Everybody’s out to dodge those dreaded double blue ticks in WhatsApp. You know, the read receipts that tell the sender that you have read their messages andput subtle pressure on you to respond immediately. Thankfully, with the next three tricks you can read messages without alerting the sender.

1. Turn on Airplane mode before you open any received WhatsApp messages. This takes WhatsApp offline and you’ll be reading the messages from the app cache. Be sure to close WhatsApp before switching off the airplane mode.

2. Add a WhatsApp widget to your home screen and read the messages at a glance. During testing, I was even able to scroll through long messages from the widget and still keep the blue ticks from showing up.
Your experience with these two hacks might vary, so it’s best to test them out with a friend before you use either of them on a regular basis.

3. Uncheck the box next to Read receipts from Settings > Account > Privacy. Remember that once you do this, you won’t be able to see read receipts from other people either, barring those in group chats.