The service offered by WhatsApp is really very stable, especially after it was bought by a company like Facebook.Unless there is a general blackout of the service or servers, which can happen for a few hours just once or twice a year, all the problems you may have with WhatsApp depend on the wrong use of the application on our smartphone.
This means that for everything that does not work, for every error or problem, there is a solution and it is enough to configure the app correctly or some general setting of the phone.
In this article we see a list of most common problems with WhatsApp, explaining what to do when something doesn’t work.
If the problem is not among those described below, we can always send a message at the end of the article to indicate any new or unpublished problems.
1) I can’t download WhatsApp
If we are unable to download WhatsApp on our Android smartphone, the problem is almost certainly due to the lack of connection of the store to the Internet or a problem related to the cache of the latter.
In this regard, we refer you to reading the guide to solve the problems of the Google Play Store on Android; after solving the problems with the Google Play Store, we should be able to download WhatsApp without problems.
If it still fails or we want to get the latest version of WhatsApp, we can download the APK file from the site whatsapp.com or alternatively from APKMirror.
The APK file is an application installation file and a special phone option must be activated to install them; for more details we refer you to reading the guide to download APK of the Android apps and receive updates without Google Play.
2) I don’t get the activation code
When you install Whatsapp on any device, both for new and old subscribers, you need to receive an SMS activation code in order to correctly associate your smartphone with our account.
Whatsapp activation can only be done on mobile phones with a working SIM card; this can create another difficulty: that once the application is installed, after writing the phone number, the activation code will arrive late or it will not arrive.
The most obvious reason for this problem is that a wrong mobile number has been written, perhaps because the country code that WhatsApp includes automatically is included.
Generally the activation of Whatsapp should be instantaneous, but if the confirmation SMS did not arrive due to network problems, you can request to be called in order to receive the activation code by voice; in this case the call is automatic and you don’t need to talk to anyone, there will be a voice that will tell you the code to insert (better get a paper and pen).
3) Contact recognition does not work
The WhatsApp contacts are none other than all the numbers we have in the phone book.
All those whose mobile phone numbers are in the phone book and who use WhatsApp are our contacts and we can contact them.
If one of our contacts does not have our phone book number, we will not be included in his contact list and if we try to write to him he will see us with the simple phone number, without any details.
To add a contact in WhatsApp, just add the number, making sure to add the international prefix (+39 for Italy).
One of the missed prefixes is perhaps one of the most known problems: even if the calls start anyway, to make a user appear on WhatsApp the international prefix must be present for your telephone number.
If a contact does not appear, open the Contacts list in Whatsapp, press the button Menu and then Refresh.
On Android, let’s make sure that WhatsApp is allowed to view our address book; to solve this problem we go into Settings > App, let’s touch on the app Whatsapp and then on Permissions).
Regarding contacts, if we can’t chat with someone, it may be that this has blocked us.
In another article we saw how to understand if we were blocked on WhatsApp.
4) WhatsApp does not connect
As mentioned at the beginning, WhatsApp is one of the most reliable services in the world and rarely does not work.
If there were problems accessing, the first thing to do is that the phone’s internet connection is active and working, opening a random site or trying another app and see if they work.
In other cases it may be a temporary problem, so try restarting the phone.
If everything fails, you can open Twitter and immediately check if there are any message trends that talk about Whatsapp Down.
If, in fact, a service like WhatsApp, used by a billion people, should stop even for a minute, there would be a rapid exchange of messages on Twitter and other social media.
Another site where to check if WhatsApp is not available is Downdetector, which immediately collects all reports of malfunctioning of the service and shows them in a graph (the more reports there are, the more likely it is that there will be problems).
5) I cannot send or receive images on WhatsApp
A more frequent WhatsApp problem can be that of not receiving images.
This can only depend on two things: the internet does not work or the phone memory is full.
If we want to free up space from internal memory or microSD, we advise you to read our guide to Free up space in Whatsapp and clean the archive use.
6) I can’t see pictures and videos I received in the past
If a video or photo that was sent to us via WhatsApp in the past is no longer open even if the message with the preview is still present in the chat history, it means that that file has been deleted.
Whatsapp in fact does not keep in memory the files transferred via chat so if a photo is deleted from the memory after having received it, it cannot be recovered from the chat but it will be necessary to request a new sending.
7) Backup recovery does not work
If on Whatsapp for Android you use the backup in Google Drive, if you try to restore after a new installation and it fails, the reason may be that we were using the beta version and want to go back to the normal version.
We can also retry the restore by reinstalling the app, but the advice we give you is to make a backup copy of WhatsApp to save on your PC, as seen in the guide on how to save Whatsapp chats, conversations and photos even on PC.
8) I do not receive messages immediately
If there was a delay in receiving messages in WhatsApp, we are probably using a “Task killer” app of those that terminate processes automatically.
These apps are useless and harmful, so let’s remove them without problems: WhatsApp needs to stay running in the background to work well and those automatic memory management or battery management systems that turn off apps in the background are detrimental to apps like Whatsapp.
If our phone has an integrated energy-saving system, make sure we add WhatsApp to the exceptions and allow it to start automatically, otherwise the messages may delay or arrive only when we open the WhatsApp app in the foreground.
In this regard, we refer you to reading our guide -> If late notifications, turn off Android battery optimization.