Last seen .... on WhatsApp

[dubiousgeorge]

Dating a man. It's early days. We get on well. I don't want anything serious. I'm a busy full time working mother so my down time is limited.

He also lives a full and busy life so a situation where we can meet now and again , maybe once a week and some weekends would suit us both.

We were chatting on the phone last night and we were talking about the ' last seen' facility on WhatsApp. Mine is disabled as my ex seemed to know when i was on line and towards the end started questioning me about why I was on line so later last night or who I was whatsapping etc .

So last myself and this man were chatting about that function and he said that he needed to disable his as he was getting messages from his ex asking what he was going on line at certain times when he was meant to be at work or whatever .
He said you have yours turned off, don't you? I was like

AIBU to run ???

If this is how you want to react then maybe he should run from you 😂

What an extreme reaction to something really silly.

What’s the issue you’re having with chat notifications? I can certainly help you out. If you’d only like to receive notifications from specific people then unfortunately that’s not an option. However, you can mute other people so there messages don’t come up on your phone. You’ll only see that they’ve sent a message once you open Whatsapp

I think it still shows you’re typing btw

Even if he did have to look, in isolation to any other red flags why would that not just mean he was interested in you. The Mumsnet take on men baffles me sometimes.

Oh thanks
the issue is, I do want silent notifications from a group but happy for others to alert (best friend mainly).

that seems to silence everyone or no one. I suppose I could set a reminder to check the group chat.

No big deal at all. I would glance at the peron's status straight away when sending a message to someone to see if they are online or not. If there's no online status under the persons name they have it switched off. Simple as that.

I think you sound very reactive to something some innocuous.

If someone has their last seen turned off then they cant see anyone else's last seen either. So i think he has made a mistake in that as he could not see yours he assumed that you had yours turned off too.

He doesn’t need to search anything. If yours is disabled then when he opens your chat to reply to a message or whatever there just won’t be “last seen at X” info visible at the top of the chat. It will just be blank like it is when you open chats to others as when you disable it you can’t see other peoples last seen info either, even if theirs is switched on.

However if you have yours switched on and so does the other person then the last seen info appears under the name at the top of the chat.

Thanks all . I understand now

You can mute a group chat
All my groups are muted. It's on the three dots at the top

You can. Go into the chat. Click on the name at the top then it says Mute and click for however long you want it to. It will just mute notifications for that chat

It's visible - but only if you have yours turned on. Hence you can't see his but he can see yours. YABVU to use this as an excuse to run...

But then I don't get a silent notification, I have to check it, I think?

my ex seemed to know when i was on line and towards the end started questioning me about why I was on line so later last night or who I was whatsapping etc

Do you think you may be projecting your experiences from your previous relationship onto your new one? We all do this to some extent but good to be self aware about it.

Maybe you are right .
His ex had been doing it to him. I've been there before and being told to put away my phone !!!! Yes I could be projecting

But to see that you don't have a "last online" time - it's literally the whatsapp page where he is talking to you. You don't have to hunt for it!

Yeah you won’t get a silent notification or anything like that. So in that sense it really is all or nothing

Dramatic af 🙄

It might seem dramatic, but in reality it's just a true misunderstanding of the technology, while OP is still obviously a little sensitive because of her own ex.

As PP have said, when you've got it turned off on your phone you can't see when any of your contacts were last online (i.e. you can't decide you don't want to be seen, but still spy on everyone else!).

You can only see "last seen" when you have the feature turned on. Otherwise you'll just see "online" or nothing.

I imagine OP is glad she posted on here to feel a bit silly in front of anonymous strangers, than potentially ruin a lovely new relationship!

Rubbish design IMHO.

What do you mean when you say silent notifications though? Do you mean that you still want it to pop up on your home screen, but not make a sound? Because you can amend that in settings. However you can’t pick and choose. It’ll be all of Whatsapp and not just for a group chat

Yes, that's what I mean. Neighbour chat is useful, and really funny sometimes, but I don't want it pinging at me.