In a world with constant change, our WhatsApp conversations often are the source of information we need from important work documents and addresses to that hilarious meme you shared with your friend last month. When you switch from your phone to the larger screen of WhatsApp Web, finding that message becomes like finding a needle in a digital haystack. Thankfully, for users of WhatsApp Web, there’s a fantastic, often overlooked, search function, and infusing your chat with this tool can save you an enormous amount of time and frustration. Here’s our guide to getting it right.
1. Master the Basic Search Bar
The first and arguably most obvious search option in WA Web is the search bar at the top of the page. When you click on it you can search through all your chats, comments, media and links. Just enter a keyword a name, a place, or a topic and your results will automatically appear in both individual and group chats. This is where you go for quick, broad searches. Because of this feature’s power in wa web you can easily jump straight to the conversation you’re looking to see with no scrolling required.
2. Filter Your Search by Media Type
Did you know you can search for certain types of files without remembering any keywords? That’s one of the great things about wa’s web-based IM system. Try to find a chat in question by looking at the top left corner, click on the name of the contact/group you want to search for, and then go into the “Chat info” screen and there’s a list of categories for:
- Photos & Videos
- Documents
- Links
Looks like clicking on any of these will pull up all the items that have been shared of that type in that conversation. Very useful for locating a PDF your colleague sent you or a vacation photo you took a year ago without having to search through tens of messages.
3. Use Quotation Marks for Exact Phrases
If you are searching for a certain phrase yet are getting results for every single word you type in try including quotation marks. For example when typing movies night this might yield only ” movies ” or just ” nights “. Type movie night (with the quotes ) into the wa web search engine so they will look for that exact phrase together. This greatly narrows down your results – and is great when you remember what was said
4. Navigate Search Results with Keyboard Shortcuts
Efficiency on wa website isn’t really about finding results, it’s about getting to the next result quickly. Once you’ve done a search use the Enter key in your keyboard to jump down the list of results — this saves a lot of time when all the messages you need have only a few result down. Combining the search bar with keyboard navigation makes your work on the desktop version much easier.
5. Pin Important Chats for Instant Access
Although it is not a true “search” function, pinning chats makes it less of a hassle to find your most important conversations as well. You can put up to 3 chats in the wa web interface. Simply right click a chat and choose “Pin chat”. The chats will be permanently pinned at the top of your chat list and you’ll immediately see them. Perfect for ongoing project groups or with family and friends.
6. Combine Search Terms for Precision
For more advanced searching you may want to combine terms. For example, if you are in a large group chat and have forgotten that two different people were talking about a meeting time, you could search for “meeting” (Sarah/John) to make sure you only see results that have context from both users. Doing some trial and error with different combinations of terms may help narrow down the message that you really need.
7. Utilize the “Unread Messages” Filter
If your purpose is just to find messages you didn’t have time to read yet (especially in a lot of crowded group chats), there’s a special filter for that. Click on the three dots (Menu) next to the search bar and select “Unread messages. ” This will display all of the chats in which you have unread messages so you can get back to what you were missing. Ensure you never lose a message because of group chat overload.
8. Remember the Mute Button to Reduce Clutter
Finally the easiest way to make searching easier is to have less irrelevant content to search through. So if you are in a group where the content keeps coming up and doesn’t always make sense to you and you want to limit it, use the “Mute” option. Right click on the chat and choose “Mute”. You can still search for important info in that chat when needed but your main chat list and search results will be less cluttered with the constant notifications and your overall wa web experience will be more focused and manageable. Let’s put these advices into practice and you’ll radically improve your time spent searching for messages on WhatsApp Web instead of being in a lot of difficulty.