Most read: This feature in WhatsApp will reduce stress

Because you probably haven't been able to read everything due to quarantine, lockdowns, and press conferences: this is one of our top scorers of the year. Grab the wine, truffle cheese, and your blanket, and enjoy reading back. Or cookies and chocolate, that’s fine too, of course. 

Plop, a notification. You have been added to the group ‘Welcome to the Neighborhood number 23 to 89’ by Steve or Truus. Within a nanosecond, you have thirty-five new messages because there is a so-called enterrer in the group and in the meantime, you also have to decipher who belongs to which number. I find a group chat here and there quite nice, but preferably with my well-being.

That’s why I’m naming this initiative grip on the group chat. Normally, WhatsApp is a kind of roulette: you never know when you end up in which state, but those times are forever gone. I want to tell you about a feature in the green app that you will be very happy about if you didn’t know it yet. I certainly do, because sometimes I see screenshots of unbothered types who calmly have 133 unread messages, but I just can’t manage that. My credo from now on is: the less, the better, and if it’s important, then you can call me.

How does it work? Open WhatsApp, go to Settings, then click on Account and select Privacy. There you will see all kinds of options, did you know, for example, that you can hide that profile picture from people who are not in your contacts? I mean: a handy tab to go through. In that specific list, you will also see the option Groups. Just click it open and that’s where the big grip on the group starts. You can manually set who can add you to a group chat, but you can also just (like me) click on Select All. This way, people can still add you to a group chat, but they have to send you a private invitation. It prevents you from being randomly thrown into any conversation, because honestly: you don’t want to talk about everything with everyone you meet on a weekday, do you?

I believe that I am currently in at least 250 groups and then every app is one less, just think about it.