What's New WeChat: Follow Members in Muted Groupchat

Michael Wester | Jul 14, 2021 2:00 pm | Add a comment | 580 reads

Cut the chit-chat and gather around to learn the latest about everyone's favorite super-app in our ongoing column, What's New WeChat.

Following members in muted group chats

We all depend on our WeChat groups these days, but incessant chatter means you can only choose two modes: turn off everybody (“mute notifications”) or simply live with the thousands of unread messages in the group.

In its latest update (8.08 on the iPhone – Android users may have to wait a bit) WeChat has taken one tiny step forward by adding a function where you can turn off a group but then turn back on notifications for up to 4 members of the group.

This is very valuable when you come to the realization that of the 500 people in your Beijing Obscure Craft Beer Aficionados group, only four of the members actually have anything worthwhile to contribute. You can go ahead and mute the whole group and then turn notifications back on for the four people whose opinions you actually respect.

This however falls short of our dream function: which is the ability to selectively turn off the loudmouths that we wish not to hear from in our various and sundry groups. The day that happens will be a glorious one indeed.

Ringtones for your pals

Another function just released is to set a default ringtone for incoming calls for individual users – go to [Message Notifications > Ringtone for Incoming Calls > Assign exclusive ringtones for friends ] and you can set the incoming ringtone for users to a weird selection of random Chinese pop and the occasional weird selection from Western artists such as Yanni and Iggy Pop