What to do if Whatsapp does not work, does not send or receive and does not connect

The service offered by WhatsApp is very stable, especially after it has been 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 that you can have with WhatsApp depend on the wrong use of the application on our smartphone.
This means that for every thing that doesn’t work, for every error or problem, there is a solution and you just need to configure the app or some general phone settings correctly.
In this article we see a list of the most common problems with WhatsApp, explaining what to do when something doesn’t work.
If the problem is not one of those described below, we can always send a message at the end of the article to indicate any new or unpublished problems.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 failure of the store to connect 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 fixing the problems with the Google Play Store, we should be able to download WhatsApp without any problems.
If this 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 you need to activate a special phone option to install them; for more details we refer you to reading the guide to download APK of Android apps and receive updates without Google Play.

2) I do not receive the activation code

When you install Whatsapp on any device, both for new and old subscribers, you must receive an SMS activation code in order to correctly associate the smartphone to our account.
Whatsapp activation can only be done on a mobile phone with a working SIM card; this can generate another difficulty: that once the application is installed, after having written the telephone number, the activation code is late in arriving or does not arrive at all.
The most obvious reason for this problem is that a wrong mobile number has been written, perhaps because the country code has been included which WhatsApp automatically includes instead.
In general, the activation of Whatsapp should be instantaneous, but if the confirmation SMS does not arrive due to network problems, you can ask to be called in order to receive the activation code by voice; in this case the call is automatic and you do not have to talk to anyone, there will be a voice that will dictate the code to enter (better bring a pen and paper).

3) Contact recognition doesn’t work for me

WhatsApp contacts are none other than all the numbers we have in the address book.
All those whose mobile number we have in our phone book and who use WhatsApp are our contacts and we can contact them.
If one of our contacts does not have our number in the address book, we will not be included in his contact list and if we try to write to him he will see us with the simple telephone number, without any details.
To add a contact in WhatsApp, just add the number, making sure to add the international prefix (+39 for Italy).
The missing prefix is ​​perhaps one of the best known problems: even if the calls leave anyway, to make a user appear on WhatsApp the country code must be present on your phone number.
If a contact does not appear, open the Contacts list in Whatsapp, press the key Menu and then Update.
On Android, let’s make sure that WhatsApp has permission to view our address book; to solve this we go to Settings > App, tap on the app WhatsApp and then on Permits).
Regarding contacts, if we are unable to chat with someone, it may be that this has blocked us.
In another article we saw how to understand if we have been blocked on WhatsApp.

4) WhatsApp does not connect

As mentioned at the beginning, WhatsApp is one of the most reliable service in the world and it rarely doesn’t work.
If there are problems logging in, the first thing to do is that your phone’s internet connection is up and running, opening a random site or trying another app and seeing if they work.
In other cases it may be a temporary problem, so try restarting your phone.
If all fails, you can open Twitter and immediately check if there are any trending posts they talk about Whatsapp Down.
If, in fact, a service like WhatsApp, used by a billion people, were to stop even for a single minute, there would immediately be a very rapid exchange of messages on Twitter and other social networks.
Another site to check if WhatsApp is not available is Downdetector, which immediately collects all reports of service malfunctions and shows them in a graph (the more reports there are, the more likely there are 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 is not working or the memory of the mobile phone is full.
If we want to free up space from the internal memory or from the microSD we advise you to read our guide to Free up space in Whatsapp and clean archive usage.

6) I cannot see pictures and videos received in the past

If a video or photo that was sent to us via WhatsApp in the past is no longer able to open even if the message with the preview is still present in the chat history, it means that that file has been deleted.
In fact, Whatsapp does not keep in memory the files transferred via chat so, if a photo is deleted from the memory after receiving it, it cannot be recovered from the chat but it will be necessary to request a new sending.

7) Backup restore does not work

If on Whatsapp for Android you use the backup in Google Drive, if you try a restore after a new installation and this fails, the reason may be that we were using the beta version and we want to go back to the normal version.
We can also try the restore again by reinstalling the app, but the advice we give you is to make a backup copy of WhatsApp to save on the PC, as seen in the guide on how to save Whatsapp chats, conversations and photos also on PC.

8) I am not receiving messages immediately

If there was a delay in receiving messages in WhatsApp, we are probably using a “Task killer” app of those that automatically terminate processes.
These apps are useless and harmful, so let’s remove them smoothly: WhatsApp needs to stay running in the background to work well, and those automatic memory management or battery management systems that disable background apps are bad for apps like Whatsapp.
If our phone has a built-in power saving system, make sure to 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 notifications are delayed, turn off Android battery optimization.