How To Tell if Someone Read your Message in WeChat

Jamie Read more July 8, 2019

Can you tell if someone read your message in WeChat? Are the notifications on the network like there are in WhatsApp or Kik? How can you tell if someone has received or read a chat or message you sent?

How To Tell if Someone Read your Message in WeChat

WeChat is a social network with the same social anxieties and the same benefits of being social. There is no doubt that interaction with other people is better for us as human beings, we are social animals after all. But with that social side come the usual anxieties over rejection, fear of missing out, perception and all those other psychological challenges we all face every time we log on to a social network.

While that may seem a negative view, it isn’t. It’s a pragmatic view. I think social networks are a power for good. It’s just that not so many people use them that way. Learning the pitfalls of social media and making peace with them is a key way of being able to live in the networks without becoming emotionally scarred by the experience.

Let’s take a look at those original questions.

Can you tell if someone read your message in WeChat?

You cannot tell from within WeChat whether your message has been delivered or read and that is by design. The only way you’re going to know is when they reply.

Are the notifications on the network like there are in WhatsApp or Kik?

WeChat said they purposely designed the app without these notifications to help lower elements of anxiety and improve privacy. There are no delivered, read or replied confirmations within WeChat so it’s up to individuals to read on their own time and reply when they are ready.

How can you tell if someone has received or read a chat or message you sent?

You can’t. The only way to tell if someone has received or read a message is when they react to it. Either by replying, calling or something else.

WeChat and notifications

WeChat made clear from the very beginning that they thought the notification setup other social networks use wasn’t for them. They thought that being held to ransom by a little blue tick and an expectation of immediate reply didn’t take into account real life and WeChat wanted nothing to do with it.

They even wrote a blog post about it. They said:

‘At WeChat, our users’ privacy is top of mind in all aspects of product development. For our over 468M monthly active users, it is important to us they have the ability to control their own privacy and information shared when communicating on WeChat.

To ensure this, we have made the following product decisions to empower users:

No Message Read Confirmations

This is why we decided not to include message read confirmations because we believe the exact time you read a message in WeChat is your business and no one else’s – unless you make that decision yourself. Users can chat freely in WeChat knowing the other party will not see any timestamp or receive information about your messaging behavior other than the content of the conversation you choose to share.’

How to handle the expectations of social media

Social media is definitely a power for good but it does bring with it some inescapable anxieties. One of those is coping with a delay in a reply. You send a message to someone and they take a while to reply. Then come the inevitable doubts, ‘did I say something wrong?’, ‘did I offend them?’, ‘why are they ignoring me?’ and so on.

Unless you know that person well and know they lead a busy life, these questions are inevitable. But they don’t have to be.

We all lead busy lives. We all have a lot going on. Whether it’s work, school, running a business, writing a thesis or spending the day surfing. While social media is a big part of our lives, it’s not all there is in our lives.

If someone takes their time replying to a message, it might not be about you. They may not have seen it. They may be in the middle of a conversation with someone else. Their phone may be off. They may be in an exam or meeting. They may be at the beach. They could be doing one of a million things that prevents them replying right away.

If you send a message on WeChat or any social network and don’t get an immediate reply, try to bear this in mind. We would all like instant gratification with a fast response but it isn’t always possible. A pause in a reply isn’t necessarily about you at all and understanding that should help lessen the anxiety.