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Its ease of use, end-to-end encryption, and cross-platform support have helped WhatsApp gain a ton of users, and if you’re using it on the web, there’s a growing number of browser extensions you can install to help you out more from the platform. All of these add-ons are compatible with both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and you should find at least some of them useful.
WA Toolkit
WAToolkit offers two tweaks for WhatsApp on the web. First, it turns on background notifications, so notifications about your messages will come in through your web browser, whether you have WhatsApp open or not. Second, it expands the text bubbles to the full width of the chat panel. You can enable both or none of the features, or just one of them. Click on the small WAToolkit icon that appears above the conversation list to find the settings.
Privacy Extension
Screenshot: Privacy extension
Privacy Extension is one of the simpler WhatsApp browser extensions, but still very useful. Its purpose is to hide various user interface elements until you hover over them. You can use it to hide messages, media, the input panel, profile pictures, and more with a simple toggle switch system, and it’s perfect if you’re using the WhatsApp web app on a device where someone might be peering over your shoulder.
WA Web Plus
WA Web Plus has a few different WhatsApp tricks you can play around with. You can redact messages and images, secretly view statuses, hide your typing status, pin conversations to the top of the list, apply custom chat wallpapers, add emoji reactions to messages, and more. Open the extensions panel by clicking the icon on the toolbar, make any changes you feel like making and they’ll be applied immediately.
WhatsAdd
WhatsAdd is more of a collection of tools than a single utility. Once installed, you can access text formatting options faster, download all media files in a conversation, and convert typed emojis to real emojis. Perhaps the most useful feature of WhatsAdd is the ability to create preset messages (e.g. that you are late, agree or whatever) which you can then access with one click from the text entry field.
Zapp
Screenshot: Zapp
Zapp is more of a niche WhatsApp web utility as it allows you to change the speed and volume of audio recordings you are listening to through the app. It adds a new button to the toolbar that you can click to show the user interface. The volume can be adjusted from zero to 100 percent, and recordings can be read at 0.5x up to 2x speed, which is very helpful when you have to process a lot of them on WhatsApp.
WIncognito
Screenshot: WAIncognito
WAIncognito deals with those annoying read notifications that appear when you’ve viewed other people’s incoming messages. With this extension installed, you can view chats without anyone knowing that you’ve been viewing them. You can mark messages as read or not at all after a certain number of seconds, and the add-on also blocks the “last seen” updates WhatsApp sends and allows you to recover deleted messages.
WheresApp
Screenshot: WheresApp
WheresApp says its mission statement is to “make your web WhatsApp work friendly” and that’s a good summary. This is mainly done by giving you the ability to hide different parts of the interface – you can clean up the clutter to just leave the current conversation visible if you like. If you take a close look at your office computer, you won’t be fooled, but you can still help with sneaky WhatsApping.
web broadcaster
Screenshot: web channel
Web Sender is more of a business-oriented WhatsApp tool, but there are features in this extension that also interest many regular users. For example, you can customize a set of quick replies that appear above the text entry field. You can also schedule messages to be sent at a specific time in the future, and you can message multiple people at the same time. It’s not an extension that everyone needs, but many people will find it very useful.
While you’re here, why not check out three secure messaging alternatives to WhatsApp?
This article has been updated since it was first published.
