WhatsApp has on Tuesday introduced a new feature called ‘Archived Chats’ for both Android and iOS users. This feature will now lets Archived Chats stay Hidden Forever , meaning that it allow users to keep a few desired chats hidden in an ‘Archived Chats Folder’. These chats will be muted even if they get new text messages until you manually choose to unarchive them.

The Facebook-owned company said in a blog post that the latest update is aimed to give users more control over their inbox and stay on top of their most important chats.

Prior to the update, archived individual and group chat threads on WhatsApp would unarchive if the user received a new message in that thread. WhatsApp, however, said that many of its users reported that they wanted archived messages to remain archive and stay tucked away from their regular messages in the Archived Chats folder. Therefore, it has brought the change to its Archived Chats settings.

The new settings allow you to archive all the less-important conversations if you don’t want them to appear in your main chats list. All you need to do is archive individual and group chats that you don’t want in your list. By default, WhatsApp will keep your archived chats separate even if they get any new messages. You can, however, disable the new settings by disabling the Keep Chats Archived option from the Chats settings menu on the app.

You will not receive any notifications for messages you get in archived chat threads unless you are mentioned or replied to.

WhatsApp appears to have been testing the new experience since at least April 2019 and brought it initially to some iPhone users through an update last week. However the feature of WhatsApp that lets Archived Chats stay Hidden Forever is now rolling out across all devices.

Users have the option to mute individual and group chats for some time. It was even extended to silence chat alerts forever through an always mute setting last year. But nonetheless, the latest update is aimed to go beyond muting certain chats and keep them away from your vision. You can, however, browse through them from the Archived Chats folder.

How to archive chats, now that WhatsApp lets Archived Chats stay Hidden Forever:

Step 1: Open WhatsApp; tap on the More options on the Chats tab

Step 2: Now select Chats> Chats history> Archive all chats

To archive a single chat, just tap and hold on to the chat that you want to hide, and then follow Step 2. Notably, users will not receive any notifications for these chats “unless they are mentioned or replied to”. To view these archived chats, all you need to do is scroll to the top of the chats screen and select “Archived”.