How to know if you have been blocked on WhatsApp

Have you wondered whether one of your WhatsApp contacts has blocked you? There’s no way to be completely sure, but there are some very strong signs that something is up. Here we show you how to figure out whether someone has blocked you on WhatsApp and never wants to speak to you again.

How do you know if a WhatsApp contact has blocked you?

There are four ways to suss out whether someone has blocked you on WhatsApp. Each sign is largely meaningless by itself, but together they form a solid reason to believe that your friend doesn't want to be your friend.
Take note that WhatsApp has deliberately made it difficult to tell whether someone has blocked you or not, in order to maintain users' privacy. There's always an outlying chance that you're just being paranoid, even when all four of the below points apply.

1. Check the 'last seen' time

A contact's 'last seen' time appears in the top bar right under their name. If there's no information about when they were last online, this could be a bad sign. It doesn't necessarily mean that they've blocked you – it is possible to stop this information appearing without blocking someone. Your friend might just value their privacy, so don't go burning bridges just yet. Read on.

If you can read this, everything is okay. 

2. Check the double check

Check marks are WhatsApp's way of compounding your obsessive streak by ensuring that you know what's going on on the other end of the line.
The first check mark means that your message has been sent. When the second one appears, your message has been received by the recipient's phone. This doesn’t mean that the person has read your message, just that it is on their phone; when those check marks turn blue, that's when they have seen the message. If you see the check marks turn blue, they haven't blocked you, and everything is fine. Take a deep breath.
If your messages never get beyond that single, sad gray tick, you might have been blocked.
There's a vague chance they still love you, though, surely? Time to keep digging.

A single gray tick is bad news for any relationship. 

3. Do your calls go through?

Another indicator that your friend hates you is that all those desperate WhatsApp calls you make never go through.
Again, maybe their phone is broken, maybe they've changed their number, etc, etc, but if this one is true and the two signs above it are, too – well, thing's aren't looking good, are they?

The reason it doesn't go through is because they hate you. 

4. Has their picture or profile changed?

If you notice that a contact hasn’t updated or changed their profile in a while, or they've had the same picture for months, this could mean that they’ve blocked you. Or that they just never update their profile. Maybe everything is fine.
Let's go a step further and check from a different account, meaning from a mutual friend’s smartphone. If you see here that your estranged friend's profile information and picture have changed, then we're sorry to break it you, but your friend has blocked you and, given how strangely you've been acting, with good reason.

Bonus method: Ask them

The final, and ultimate, way of knowing is to ask them. If they say yes, then they have blocked you. If they make up a terrible excuse, they have blocked you. But if the reason why they never respond to you seems plausible and they invite you to hang out, everything is OK. For now.