We use WhatsApp to chat with people we want. And with all certainty, most of us prefer WhatsApp to all other messaging apps, no matter how sophisticated and interesting they seem. Considering how much we rely on WhatsApp to contact almost anyone we know, it’s rather interesting that most of us have only around five contacts we actively chat with. In other words, the largest chunk of our WhatsApp experience– chatting– revolves around just a handful of individuals we know and care about.
And this explains why you might be surprised to open WhatsApp one day and find something strange with one of your contacts you frequently chat with.
You might notice that the profile photo has disappeared, and so have other parts of the user’s account. The messages you send will have a single tick, and the last seen or online status will not appear.
All of these symptoms might point to several things. And one of the possibilities is that the user has changed their WhatsApp number.
But how to confirm if a person has modified their WhatsApp number? And do you get notified when this happens?
Read on to discover whether it’s possible to find out if someone changed their number on WhatsApp and how you can find this out.
Do you get a notification when someone changes their WhatsApp number?
On most such occasions when a contact changes their number, you won’t have to check anything. This is because you get a notification in your WhatsApp inbox when someone changes their number.
When you change your WhatsApp number, you get an option to tell your contacts about the change. You can notify all your contacts or only those you have ever chatted with.
Therefore, if one of your contacts has recently changed their WhatsApp number, they must have got the option to notify their contacts. And if they choose to notify you, you will get a message on the person’s chat screen on your WhatsApp. The message says something like this:
[The person] changed their phone number to a new number. Tap to message or add the new number.
When you click on this message, you can message the person on their new number or add the new number to your contacts.
How to Know If Someone Changed Their Number on Whatsapp
If you see the message we just talked about, there is no problem. But if you don’t see the message, it means the user intentionally didn’t notify you about the change.
In this case, your messages will never get the “delivered” status, and only a single tick will appear. The profile photo, name, about, and all other user info will go blank. And you won’t see any last seen or online status, either.
But the above signs can also mean things other than a changed WhatsApp number. You might observe these signs if the person has blocked you. Or they might have deleted their account.
So, how can you differentiate between the three scenarios and determine if the person has actually changed their number?
Check your WhatsApp Contact List:
If you are unsure why you can’t message someone, there’s a way to rule out the possibility of being blocked.
Head to your Contact List on WhatsApp and look for the contact’s number. To do that, tap on the Chat cloud icon in the lower-right corner of the Chats tab and search for the person’s name or number through the search bar.
If you see an Invite button next to the person’s name, it means no WhatsApp account exists with that number. But since you know there was an account with the number earlier, it only means one of two things: the user has deleted their account or changed their number.
Now, how can you find out, for sure, that the person has not deleted their account but has just changed their number? There is only one way: groups.
Open a group your friend is a member of:
If you and your friend are members of a group on WhatsApp, you can easily find out whether your friend has changed their number.
Whenever someone changes their WhatsApp number, WhatsApp notifies this change in all the groups the person belongs to. So, if you share a group with your friend, you can go to the group chat and look for any message that says something like this:
“+919876543210 changed to +910123456789.“
If you don’t see any such message but still see the Invite button beside the person in your Contact List, it most likely means they have deleted their account.
Ask a mutual friend:
If you don’t share any common groups with your friend, there is sadly no other way to find out if your friend has changed their number.
You can resort to other practical ways like asking a common friend or directly calling your friend on their old number off WhatsApp.
Summing up
WhatsApp allows every user to change their phone number anytime they want. Changing the phone number means delinking the account with the old number and linking it with the new one.
If you want to know whether someone changed their number on WhatsApp, you can check for a notification message in the chat or a similar message in a common group. If none of these conditions apply, the only way is to ask a common friend or contact the person directly.
On that note, it’s time to wrap up this blog! Did you find it helpful? Tell us in the comments below.
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