WhatsApp last seen

[PopPingPong]

Sorry if this has been done to death! I can't find the answer from googling.

I always thought that the last seen time stamp showed the last time that a person had the WhatsApp screen open on their device, i.e. when they last looked at it /read a message. But I've noticed from seeing someone online that their timestamp is from the last time they sent a message, not the last time they looked. Has it always been that way?

Basically, I received a message, saw they were online for a while after they'd sent it (more than a minute) but later their timestamp was the time of the last message sent to me.

Does it make a difference if it's from a computer rather than a phone?

Are you stalking some poor sod or something? 😂

I think it’s usually last time they opened the app.

sometimes it doesn’t always pick it up though, I’ve noticed this when next to a friend and she didn’t have last seen after using the app, only the last message. Generally though it’s last time app was opened.

I won’t ask why you’re asking… we’ve all been there ;)

Oh dear. He's not worth it OP.

I turn all of that stuff off. Honestly life is so much easier if you don't think about it.

It’s not the last time the app was open. It’s the last time they opened the app and physically sent a message

Stalker territory.

Or the last time they sent a message without opening the app, eg via their car.

There are an awful lot of variables OP, depending on how you access WhatsApp. I honestly think the whole feature is really not very helpful and makes people feel pressured to respond instantly instead of taking their time.

That said I do use it to check roughly what time my son went to bed the previous day so I know whether to bother phoning him before 2pm 😂

and that's why I put my privacy settings that this doesn't show...

Lol OP - I've been there!

But to answer your question - I think sometimes it might glitch and stay "online" for longer than they actually are, and then when it refreshes it updates to the actual time they were last on. This happens on fb messenger a lot too. Idk if I explained that too well, and maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I think anyway!

Don't be creepy.

I use whatsapp web on my laptop and it does strange things sometimes with last seen/online, I assume the phone app does it too. It's not foolproof and just FYI should not be abused in the form of creepy stalking

I sometimes get lengthy messages from people and their 'last seen' will be several hours earlier.

My boyfriend messaged me this morning and it said typing and I received his message all whilst showing him as being offline.

if you're at a point of analysing someone's online activity, you have bigger problems that the specific workings of WhatsApp tbh.

Hence why I turn it off. No one needs to know when I was last online or if I read a message.

That’s because you can reply to a message from your lock screen and don’t need to actually go on the app to respond.

So OP there last seen could be 12pm but they could have been physically sending messages up until 2pm if they reply via lock screen. As someone said, there’s so many variables it’s not really worth trying to figure it out