If you’re unsatisfied with all of your individual WhatsApp notifications being grouped into one, or have recently purchased a new phone and can’t work out why you’re no longer able to see each new message notification individually, then you’ve come to the right place.
To learn how to ungroup WhatsApp notifications on Android and iOS devices, simply follow our step-by-step instructions below. For all other information, or if you have any further questions, we recommend you turn your attention to the FAQ section at the end of this article.
Table of Contents
How to ungroup WhatsApp notifications (iOS)
- On your iOS smartphone or tablet device, open up your Settings app by locating it and tapping on its icon
- Scroll down through the Settings menu and tap on ‘Notifications’ to take you to Notification settings
- Now, under ‘Notification Style’, scroll down to and tap on WhatsApp
- Lastly, at the bottom of the following screen, locate and tap on ‘Notification Grouping’ and then select ‘Off’
- Exit out of the Settings menu and your changes will be successfully applied
How to ungroup WhatsApp notifications (Android)
- On your Android smartphone or tablet device, open up your Settings app by locating it and tapping on its icon
- Scroll down through the Settings menu and tap on ‘Notifications’ to take you to Notification settings
- Under ‘Recently Sent’, tap ‘See all’ to take you to the full list of your apps and their notification settings
- Tap ‘Most recent’ at the top of the next page, and instead select ‘All’
- Scroll down toward the bottom of the list where you’ll find WhatsApp’s notification settings. Tap on the WhatsApp icon/name
- Under ‘Chats’ toggle ‘Group notifications’ from ON (blue) to OFF (grey)
- Exit out of the Settings menu and your changes will be successfully applied
And that’s all you need to know to ungroup, or turn grouping off, on WhatsApp notifications! For any other information, or if you have further questions, see our FAQs below.
FAQs
What are grouped notifications?
Our smartphones have evolved over the years into tiny, pocket-sized supercomputers. They are capable of quite extraordinary things, and almost entirely customisable. Only thing is: sometimes default settings are hidden away so deep into our ‘Settings’ app that we may never know where to look for them, or if they even exist.
Such is the case with so-called ‘grouped’ notifications. When an app wants to alert you to a change (a new message, like, download, follow, etc.) it sends you a notification (provided you have notifications for said app turned on). However, if you receive multiple notifications from the same app, chances are your smartphone is going to ‘group’ these together.
Instead of being able to pull up your notifications from your lock screen, or notification centre, one-by-one, you’ll instead be presented with a single notification which might say something like “24 new WhatsApp messages”. Your phone has pooled all individual message notifications into one single notification.
Why would I want to ungroup WhatsApp notifications?
For many, grouped notifications are a blessing. Instead of their phone being littered with notifications badges and banners, it is streamlined, alerting them to the presence of notifications, but giving them no more information (until they go looking for it).
Of course, this isn’t the case for everyone. There are plenty of us out there who would rather be able to see all of their various notifications from WhatsApp – detailing all of the different messages they’ve received – at a glance.
By ‘ungrouping’ WhatsApp notifications, you’re able to get each new message notification from WhatsApp on your screen at once, meaning that you can scroll through them to check if there are any which need immediate attention or not, instead of having to actually go onto the app to check.
This is the primary benefit of ‘ungrouping’ your WhatsApp notifications.
Can you ungroup WhatsApp notifications on any device?
Yes! Absolutely. No matter whether you have an Android, Google, iOS or other device, ungrouping WhatsApp notifications should be fairly straightforward. Just be aware that the means of adjusting these settings lies in your actual ‘Settings’ app, rather than on the WhatsApp app itself. Check out our step-by-step tutorials above to learn how to ungroup WhatsApp notifications on Android and iOS devices.
