How to Check If Someone Blocked You on WhatsApp

If someone on WhatsApp continuously fails to respond to you, they may be ignoring you — or they may have blocked you from contacting them altogether.

How to tell you’ve been blocked on WhatsApp

There’s no way to be 100% sure, as WhatsApp doesn’t officially notify users when they’re blocked, but there are a few things that could indicate that a contact has blocked you on WhatsApp, and putting all the clues together can give you a safe assumption after a while:

• You can’t see when that person was last seen (i.e., when the person has last used WhatsApp) or online (i.e., when they last had WhatsApp open and connected to the internet).
• You can’t see profile photos or photo updates.
• Messages show one check mark (sent) but not two (delivered).
• Calls to the contact fail.

Of course, WhatsApp says that this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule — these indicators don’t guarantee that you’ve been blocked. If someone is offline, for example, you may only see one checkmark next to messages for a period of time, and calls won’t go through. And certain privacy settings can limit who sees your “last seen” status.

How to block a contact on WhatsApp

The ambiguity can be handy if you want to block someone you’ve been chatting with on WhatsApp without them knowing. They certainly won’t get a notification or any clear signal that they’ve been blocked.

There are a few ways to block a contact on WhatsApp. On both iOS and Android, you can go to Settings > Account > Privacy > Blocked (contacts) to add contacts to your blocked list.

Alternatively, you can block individuals from their profile page. On iOS, open the chat and tap the contact’s name and picture at the top of the window. If they’re part of a group you’re in, tap the group name, select the contact and tap Info to open their profile. At the bottom, tap Block Contact. On Android, tap More options (three vertical dots) > More > Block > Block. You can also block an unknown number directly from within your chat history.