WhatsApp Groups

What are WhatsApp groups?

WhatsApp groups are collections of WhatsApp users who share messages with each other. You can create or be a member of as many groups as you want, and each group can have up to 100 people in it. Each group has one or more administrators, who are the only people who can add or remove contacts for the group.

How to use WhatsApp groups

Part 1: How to create a WhatsApp group

1. Turn on your mobile phone and tap WhatsApp to open it.

2. Tap the Chats category (the middle one). Then, tap the "Other Options" menu (the three white dots).

3. In the menu that appears, tap New Group.

4. Tap where it says "Type Group Subject Here" and use your phone's (virtual) keyboard to type in a name for the group, up to 25 characters in length. You can also tap the smiley face icon to choose an emoticon to use in your group name; this counts as 2 characters.

You can also tap the blank profile picture here and select a picture to represent your group from your phone's camera roll or stored pictures. (If your picture is sufficiently large, you will need to move and crop the frame to decide how much of your picture you want to use.)

When you're ready to move on, tap Next.

5. You must now select contacts who will be members of the group.

Tap the box labelled "Type Contact Name" and use your (virtual) phone keyboard to type in the name of a contact to search for. As you do, your contacts whose names match your search terms will appear in a drop-down menu. Tap a contact here to add them to your group. To remove a contact that you've added the group, tap the "X" beside their name.

When you've finished adding group members, tap Create.

Part 2: How to manage a WhatsApp group

6. Tap the Chats header, and then tap the name of the group that you want to manage.

7. You can send and receive messages with all members of the group in the same way as we outlined in our How to Use WhatsApp tutorial. Note that even if you have blocked certain members of a group, you will still receive messages that they send to that group, and they will receive any messages that you send to the group.

To manage the group, tap its name in the top-left corner.

8. Under the "Participants" heading, you can tap Add Participant, and then select a person from your list of contacts to add to the group.

You can also tap the name of someone in the group for additional options. You can, for example, tap Make Group Admin to give that person the ability to add or remove group members. You can also tap Remove [Person] to kick that person out of the group.

Finally, you can tap Exit Group to leave the group. If you are the only administrator of the group, another group member chosen at random will become the new administrator.

Those are the basics of using WhatsApp groups!