Since 2018, WhatsApp has informed us when a message has been forwarded in a futile attempt to fight SPAM and fake news , a feature that was improved in 2019 by reporting whether a message had been forwarded many times to prevent fake messages from going viral.
All messages that we forward to our contacts will appear marked as ‘Forwarded’ or ‘Forwarded many times’, thus informing our contacts that someone has previously sent us that message, photo, video or audio. Luckily, there is another alternative method to forward a message on WhatsApp that bypasses this tip-off .
Forward images, videos, audios and files without the ‘Forwarded’ flag
If we receive a message with an image, video, audio or file and we want to share it with our contacts but we don’t want the ‘Forwarded’ flag to appear, we don’t have to use the ‘Forward’ action but the ‘Share’ option and then choose WhatsApp and the contact(s) to send the message to. The sharing option does not allow WhatsApp to flag it.
Another advantage of the ‘Share’ option is that we can edit the image or video before sending it, as well as add a comment to the message itself, which is not the case with the ‘Forward’ option, which forwards the original message as is.
In forwarded messages, the share option often disappears, so here we have to open that image or video from our mobile gallery to be able to share it from there to avoid it being marked as ‘Forwarded’.
Forward text messages and links
For text messages and messages with links to websites, the ‘Share’ option does not appear. Only the ‘Forward’ and ‘Copy’ options appear to share that message. To avoid the ‘Forwarded’ message, we have to use the ‘Copy’ option . Once we have copied the text message, we just have to go to the conversation and paste the text to share that message with our contact.