A small and very useful WhatsApp trick allows us to use the app quickly without even having to open it, but on Android and iOS it works differently
Although WhatsApp is one of the most used apps in the world, not everyone knows it perfectly: there are in fact some "tricks", which can make its use much easier, that few people know. The reason is simple: WhatsApp is already very easy to use, so few people bother to find ways to make it even easier.
And yet these ways are there, because Facebook's developers are constantly improving WhatsApp by adding small and large innovations. Small like the ability to quickly listen to voice messages, big like WhatsApp multi-device to use the same profile on multiple devices at once, even if the main smartphone isn't online. Among the small novelties, WhatsApp has long introduced one that allows us to access a quick menu without even opening the app. It works on both Android and iOS, but due to the different functioning of these two operating systems, the effects of the same gesture are very different. Here's what happens when we hold down the WhatsApp app for at least two seconds.
WhatsApp: how to activate the menu
To activate WhatsApp's quick menu on your smartphone, you need the app's icon to be positioned on your Home. So on Android, if it's not there or if it's been removed, you need to reposition it by going to search for it among the list of apps.
WhatsApp: how is the quick menu
At this point we will be ready to open the quick menu of WhatsApp: just press and hold the icon of the app on the Home screen for at least two seconds (one is enough on Android) and options will appear that are normally hidden. They will be different on iOS and Android, because the way the two main operating systems work is different.
In both cases, at the top of the menu, the options common to all apps will appear. On iOS we'll be able to delete the app, share it with a contact or place it on the Home screen. On Android we can remove it, uninstall it or change its name. On Android we'll see quick access to the camera and then to the 4 chats we've interacted with lately. On iOS there will be icons to show our QR code (very useful to have someone add us on the fly), to open the camera, to start a new chat or to search within existing chats.