Mute – a term that refers to silencing something, or someone, for either focusing fully on the task at hand, or simply because you don’t wish to be disturbed by that individual person or thing. The muting feature is quite popular across social media these days. Be it muting your own notifications or muting specific people or chats; we’re all well-equipped with silencing the things that are problematic for us, and for a good reason. Because in a world where distractions surround you from all sides, it’s essential to have a choice of muting things out in order to focus on your goal and be productive.
Just like other social media platforms, WhatsApp also puts emphasis on enabling its users to mute chats and statuses.
But do any of these features interfere with the calling facility offered by the platform? That’s what we aim to understand in today’s blog. Let’s get started!
If You Mute Someone on Whatsapp Can They Call You?
If this question has crossed your mind, it’s evident that you don’t have a very diverse experience with the muting feature. While this feature has been around on WhatsApp for a long time, not all of us have had the opportunity to use it.
After all, there are not many scenarios where you might need to mute someone on the platform. So, we’ll begin by answering your question right away and then move on to learn about the different kinds of muting features on the platform.
Does muting someone on WhatsApp prevent them from calling you? No, it doesn’t. Muting has no relevance with WhatsApp calls, which is why a user can call you even if you have muted them.
Different kinds of muting features on WhatsApp
So, there are two different kinds of muting features available to you on WhatsApp:
1. Muting chat
This feature helps you get rid of unnecessary message notifications that might interrupt your work frequently. It works for individual chats, and is pretty easy to enable. All you need to do is long-press on the chat you want to mute, and a column of icons will appear on top of your screen.
From here, choose a speaker icon with a line drawn across it – the mute icon – and tap on it. Next, WhatsApp will ask you for how long you want to keep their chat muted, with three options listed below: 8 hours, 1 week, or always.
Select the preference that suits you best, and your job will be done. Moving forward, you won’t receive any message notifications from this user for the chosen period. You’ll only see them when you open your Chats tab.
2. Muting status
This feature helps you to avoid seeing status updates from a particular user. WhatsApp understands how some users’ statuses might make others feel inadequate at times.
For instance, if you’re working extra hours at the office this whole month, pictures of your friend chilling on a family vacation will not make you feel good, would it?
To protect yourself from such torture, what you can do is mute their statuses, so that you don’t come face-to-face with them; at least until you’re ready.
Using this feature is fairly simple. All you need to do is go to your Status tab, scroll to their status updates, and give it a long press.
As you do, a dialogue box will appear on your screen, asking if you want to mute this person’s statuses? Tap on Mute on this tab yet again, and your job will be done.
If you’re wondering whether muting someone will remove their statuses from your WhatsApp completely, that’s not how it works. Their statuses will still show up on your tab, but just not in their older location.
Instead, they’ll all be stored at the bottom of the Status tab, in a separate folder called Muted updates. It is only when you voluntarily open this folder that you’ll be able to see these statuses.
Having talked about both kinds of mutes on WhatsApp, we’ll conclude by saying that neither of them has any impact on WhatsApp calls whatsoever. So, whether you’ve muted someone’s chats or their status, they’ll still be able to call you on the platform just like before.
Is there a way to prevent someone from calling you on WhatsApp?
So far, all we’ve talked about is how there’s no link between muting someone on WhatsApp and preventing them from calling you. But what if you’re looking to avoid someone’s WhatsApp calls specifically? Is there another way of doing that on the platform?
While there is, we’re afraid it might sound a bit extreme to some users – yes, we’re talking about blocking this person. It is the only way you can prevent them from calling you.
If this isn’t possible in your case, all you can do is ignore their call when you’re preoccupied and get back to them later on.
Alternatively, you can also take a more direct approach and explain to them how their calls create problems for you in time of work, and it’d be great if they put more consideration into their timings before calling you in the future.
In the end
As we come to the end of our blog, let us quickly summarize all our learnings of the day before we part ways.
Our discussion today began from the point of muting people on WhatsApp. We first addressed how the action has no impact on WhatsApp calls, then moved on to explain both kinds of mute on the platform along with their functions.
Towards the end, we also talked about how you could prevent someone from calling you on the platform, which was only possible by blocking them. Was our solution effective in your case? We’d love to know more about it in the comments section below.
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