Whether clearing out a backlog of old chats or getting rid of unwanted active ones, simply follow our quick and easy tutorial to learn how to delete a WhatsApp group from the app. For any additional inquiries or information, see the FAQs at the bottom of this article.
Note: In order to permanently delete a group from the app, you will first need to be one of the group’s admins, and will have to remove every other member of the group individually, before manually exiting the group yourself, before you are able to delete it.
If you are not a group chat admin, then you can still exit the group and delete it – but doing so will only delete it from your lists/feed, it will not delete the chat as a whole, since it is not your chat to delete (it belongs to another admin)
Table of Contents
How to delete a Whatsapp Group
- Open up the WhatsApp app on your phone, tablet, or PC, and if necessary sign in to your account
- Locate the group(s) you wish to delete (remember this may be in your ‘Archived’ folder, which you can access by tapping ‘Archived’ at the very bottom of the home page).
- Tap on the group chat to open it up, then tap on the name of the group at the top to enter its settings.
- If you are not the admin of this group, skip to step 6. If you are the admin, then scroll down in the settings until you see the list of group members. You’ll now have to remove each individual member by tapping and holding their WhatsApp names (or right-clicking/clicking the menu option on their names) until a pop-up menu appears. Next, tap ‘Remove [NAME]’, and when prompted to confirm, tap ‘OK’
- Repeat step 4 for every member of the group except for yourself.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page, and tap ‘Exit group’
- Finally, you’ll see ‘Exit group’ change to ‘Delete group’, tap this now, and when prompted to confirm, tap ‘Delete’
- At this point, you can decide whether to also delete the media you’ve sent to the chat from the chat’s history – this is entirely up to you.
And there you have it! Whatever your reasoning, you can safely, securely, and easily remove yourself (or other members) from any unwanted group, and then having done so, finally delete the group itself – either completely (if you were an admin), or just from your own feed (if you were just a member).
For any additional information or queries, see our FAQs below.
Frequently asked questions
What is WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is one of the world’s leading and most popular instant messaging (IM) social networking apps, now owned and operated by Facebook. WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryption on chats, meaning that your conversations with friends, family, and colleagues are kept safe and private.
WhatsApp allows you to connect with anyone who has the app via their mobile numbers, provided you have a connection to the internet. Through WhatsApp, you can create and join groups, created for special occasions, or just to keep grouped together a particular group of friends, or a household, say.
You can connect with as many people as you like through WhatsApp, in as many different combinations of groups, and luckily, all of your conversations and their histories can easily be backed up to the cloud, meaning even if you were to lose or break your phone, you could still retrieve your WhatsApp conversations when you next were able to.
What is a WhatsApp Group?
A WhatsApp Group is a personalisable grouping of you and your contacts on the WhatsApp app, allowing all members to converse with each other as a group via text, images, GIFs, videos, you name it. One of the most popular uses of WhatsApp Groups these days is to organise events between friends, or share videos and links to music you think the group might enjoy as a whole.
Why would I want to delete a Group on WhatsApp?
There are any number of reasons you might want to delete a group on WhatsApp. Probably the most common reason is that you no longer use the group – probably it was created for some specific event (birthday, anniversary, party, holiday) which has long since passed, and there’s no longer a need for that specific WhatsApp group.
Alternatively, you might just no longer be keeping in touch with a group of friends you were only active with for a short while, or a while ago. Most likely, you’re here because you want to clear up your WhatsApp archived folder, leaving you with only those group chats still relevant to you.
Can I delete any WhatsApp Group?
Not quite. You can only delete a group if you are one of or the only Group Admin – i.e. if you created it in the first place, or were made admin by the original creator. This is because in order to fully and permanently ‘delete’ the group chat, you’ll have to first remove all of its participants from the chat, something only the admins have the permission to do.
What you can do, however, is to ‘Exit Group’ from the options of any unwanted group, and then ‘Delete’ it from those same options (or by holding down on it to highlight it in the list of chats in the app, and then tap the bin icon at the top – only available to you if you’ve first left the group).
What happens when I delete a WhatsApp Group?
When you delete a group, the group will be removed from your list of WhatsApp chats which you see when you open the app. The conversation history/chat data will also be removed from your phone. The chat will still be visible for all other members/ex-members of that group though (even if you’ve removed them all), until they themselves personally ‘delete’ it from their own list of active chats.
Can I rejoin/recover an accidentally deleted WhatsApp Group?
If you were the admin of a group you’ve now permanently deleted, then we’re afraid not. The group is gone and there is no way to recover it. However, if you simply exited a group, and then deleted it from your personal lists/feed, you could feasibly rejoin the group by getting in contact with one of its members/its admin and politely asking them to reinstate you as a member.
