Whether you're shooting the breeze with your friends, planning your weekend football game or exchanging childcare tips with your NCT group, WhatsApp is arguably the best app in the world for having group conversations

Anyone can create a group and add as many people as they like. Members can then pitch in with their own comments, photos and videos, or respond directly to individual messages within the broader chat thread.

WhatsApp's advanced encryption means that all your conversations are safe, secure and - most importantly - private.
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But every once in a while, you get added to a group with far too many members, or with a bunch of people who feel the need to give a running commentary on everything they're doing.

Suddenly your phone won't stop buzzing with incessant notifications.

You can feel your stress levels rising, but you don't feel you can leave the group, either because you don't want to offend the other members or because you don't want to miss a genuinely important piece of information.

In this situation, the only solution is to MUTE the chat. This means you'll still receive messages sent to the group, but your phone won't notify you when they're received.
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You can choose to mute group notifications for a specified period of time - either 8 hours, 1 week or 1 year.

Whether you're using an iPhone or Android phone, the process for muting group notifications is the same:

  1. Go to the group in WhatsApp
  2. Tap the subject of the group
  3. Tap "mute"
  4. Select the length of time you'd like to mute notifications for

Now take a deep breath, and listen to the blissful silence.

If you want to go a step further and leave the group altogether, you can do this from the same menu.

  1. Go to the group in WhatsApp
  2. Tap the subject of the group
  3. Tap "exit group"
  4. Confirm your selection

If you leave a group, you'll still be able to see the group in your Chats tab on WhatsApp, and be able to read the chat history unless you choose to delete it.

If you're the only group admin and you exit a group, a participant is chosen at random to become the new admin.