Ever since it came into existence a decade ago, WhatsApp has become an integral way of communication with friends, family, businesses, and more. However, the fact that anyone having access to your phone number can contact you via the app is something that can be annoying at times.
What this means is that anyone who has saved your number in their phonebook can send you texts on WhatsApp and even call you via video or audio call. In this post, we’ll thus help you mute calls via WhatsApp on Android and iOS.
Related: How To Mute a Video on Whatsapp Before Sharing It
Method 1: Mute when it’s ringing
Calls via WhatsApp work in a similar fashion to calls on your phone numbers. Thus muting them is as simple as you would mute other calls.
On Android
You can mute a WhatsApp call when you receive it on your Android phone in a similar way to mute a regular phone call. To do that, press the volume down key or power key on your Android device when you’re receiving a WhatsApp call to mute them individually.
On iOS
You can mute a WhatsApp call on iOS by silencing it like a regular voice call. To silence a WhatsApp call individually, press the button or Sleep/Wake button or either volume buttons on your iPhone. When you mute WhatsApp call using this method, your call will keep on ringing but silent and will go unanswered after a few seconds.
Related: How to Delete Whatsapp Account and All Your Whatsapp Data
Method 2: Mute all calls completely
If you’re someone who doesn’t expect any voice or video call via WhatsApp but are using it to simply receive texts and media, then you can mute all WhatsApp calls.
On Android
To mute all calls on WhatsApp on an Android device, open WhatsApp, tap on the 3-dots icon at the top right.
Select the ‘Settings’ option from the drop-down menu.
Inside the WhatsApp Settings screen, select the ‘Notifications’ option.
On the next screen, scroll down until you reach the ‘Calls’ section. In this section, tap on ‘Ringtone’. When a list of options is presented to you, tap on ‘None’.
Now that you have muted all sounds for WhatsApp calls, your job is not done yet. Your Android device will still vibrate when you receive a WhatsApp call.
To stop your phone from vibrating every time you get a WhatsApp call, select ‘Vibrate’ from under the ‘Calls’ section inside the ‘Notifications’ screen. When prompted with a list of options, choose ‘Off’ to completely disable vibration for incoming calls.
There you go! You have successfully muted all incoming call notifications for WhatsApp calls. Your Android phone will no longer buzz or produce sound when you receive a call on WhatsApp.
On iOS
Unlike on Android, the WhatsApp app on iOS doesn’t let you mute incoming WhatsApp calls separately. Instead, you’re forced to mute all notifications from within the app which means in addition to silencing your WhatsApp calls, iOS will also mute notifications for texts received within the app if you follow the method below.
To proceed with muting all WhatsApp calls on iOS, you need to launch WhatsApp on your iPhone/iPad, tap on the ‘Settings’ tab at the bottom, and select the ‘Notifications’ option on the screen.
Inside the ‘Notifications’ screen, you will notice that there’s no dedicated notification control for WhatsApp calls. So, your only option is to completely disable notifications for WhatsApp. You can do that by tapping the ‘In-App Notifications’ options inside the ‘Notifications’ screen.
In the next screen, you will have to make separate changes to the way you’re alerted on WhatsApp. If you don’t want your iPhone to ring upon receiving a WhatsApp call, then disable the ‘Sounds’, and ‘Vibrate’ toggles. If you wish to see visual alerts for calls and messages, you can keep the ‘Alert Style’ to ‘Banners’ or ‘Alerts’.
If not, you can change the Alert style to ‘None’ if you want to completely remain undisturbed for alerts on WhatsApp.
This is the only way you can mute WhatsApp calls on iOS.
Related: How To Retrieve Deleted Whatsapp Messages on iPhone and Android
Method 3: Mute calls for a contact
The following section will help you figure out a way to mute the WhatsApp calls of a specific person instead of muting all of them.
On Android
In the previous section, we explained how you can completely mute calls on the WhatsApp app on Android. But if you’re someone who does interact with voice and video calls on the popular messaging app, then the earlier solution might not be something you’d wish to use.
Fortunately for you, WhatsApp lets you mute calls from a specific contact so that you’re notified about calls from other people.
To mute WhatsApp calls from a specific contact, open WhatsApp and make sure you’re on the main ‘Chats’ screen inside the app. Here, select the chat thread you want to mute calls from.
Once the thread is open, tap on the person’s name at the top of your screen.
When the person’s profile page opens, tap on the ‘Custom Notifications’ option.
On the next screen, check the box adjacent to ‘Use Custom Notifications’ at the top. The option to mute WhatsApp calls from this person will only be available when you enable this Custom Notifications.
On the same screen, tap on ‘Ringtone’ under the ‘Call notifications’ section and select ‘None’. Similarly, tap on ‘Vibrate’ under the ‘Call notifications’ section and select ‘Off’.
All WhatsApp calls from this person will be muted. You can repeat the process for muting calls from various contacts you need to silence beforehand.
On iOS
Unfortunately for iOS users, WhatsApp doesn’t allow you to customize whose calls you can mute. This is because there is no separate way to control notifications for calls on WhatsApp like its Android counterpart. If you’re looking to mute WhatsApp calls from a specific person, then your only option is to block the contact on WhatsApp.
You can block someone on WhatsApp by opening the chat thread you have with the concerned person, tapping on their contact name at the top, and selecting the ‘Block Contact’ option. Blocked numbers will no longer be able to make calls to your WhatsApp account or send texts to you.
You can view all the contacts you have blocked on WhatsApp by going to WhatsApp Settings > Account > Privacy > Blocked.
That’s it. That’s all you need to know about muting calls via WhatsApp. For more queries regarding WhatsApp, check out our dedicated WhatsApp section or hit us a comment below this post.
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Hi ,
The procedure mentioned above ( method 2 ) for silencing WhatsApp call on iOS ones not work unfortunately .