Those new blue check marks in WhatsApp mean your message has been read

WhatsApp, one of the most widely used cross-platform messaging services in the world, has a new feature, and it’s one which has been strangely missing all this time. The check marks which appear after you send a message now have a third stage, which shows when the message has been viewed.

Anyone who uses the app will be familiar with the single, then double ticks which show up under your outgoing messages. The first denotes it being sent successfully, while the second double ticks indicated the message had arrived on the other phone. Now, those two ticks will turn blue once the message has been read.

Prior to this, the only way to work out if your friend had read your message was to use the “Last seen” date and time stamp below their name. This new method is simpler, and likely more accurate. It’s also somewhat surprising it has never been implemented before.

If you’re about to head over to your preferred app store to grab the WhatsApp update to get the feature, there’s no need. This isn’t part of a new version of the app, and it should already be live now, after being pushed out over-the-air by the Facebook-owned company. Details of the alteration are listed on the WhatsApp FAQ.

In August, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum confirmed the service had 600 million monthly active users, beating competition from WeChat, which had 438 million users around the same time, and Line with around 400 million users. WhatsApp is free to download and use for the first year, after which time you’ll need to pay $1 per year to continue using the service.