7 very useful WeChat features you may not know about

New to China or simply a technophobe? You need to read this

As far as the essential apps for Beijing life go, WeChat unquestionably sits atop the list. Asking someone for their number is a thing of the past, having been completely replaced by an awkward scan-and-wait process. Although most of us will be very familiar with the groups, stickers and Wallet functions which are used on a daily basis, there are a few features you may not be aware of. Here are some tricks the app has up its sleeve.

Book all the things

Really, everything. Taxis and ride shares can be booked via the Didi platform under ‘Order Taxi’. Cinema tickets can be bought from the app, often with discounts over buying in person. WeChat has your back when it comes to holidays too – with hotels, trains and even flights bookable in the Wallet section. Food can be ordered through Meituan which has an embedded app also. Perhaps the most useful function is the mobile top-up feature, which allows you to purchase credit and just data alone, which is difficult to do otherwise on prepaid plans. While these features exist solely in Chinese, they present a good opportunity to improve your reading skills and are for the most part self-explanatory. If you’re not confident enough in your language to use these tools, you can always…

Practice your Chinese or English and make friends

This is somewhat cheeky, but pretty harmless. If you open the ‘People Nearby’ function in Beijing, where there are always at least 28 million people nearby, chances are someone will drop you a message and begin a conversation. The content and end goal of that conversation may vary wildly, but it is a chance to practice Chinese when paired with WeChat’s translate function, or any other language you may encounter, and you may even find a friend and conversation partner of sorts using this method.

Donate to charity

This doesn’t mean sending a hongbao to a student – WeChat actually has a feature for the most altruistic among us. There are tens of thousands of organisations to choose from and donations are accepted in one-off payments or recurring subscriptions. This is slightly more convenient than being harassed on a main street by a teenager with a clipboard, as is the preferred method of collecting donations in many places around the world.

Pay for things in China and abroad

WeChat is unstoppable in its quest for world domination and is already spreading further afield. Just last month WeChat announced it is moving its payment platform into Europe to compete with Alipay, which targeted the market back in 2015. November is the anticipated launch date, but the rollout may well be slow and limited to big cities initially – as we saw with Alipay.

Track steps and compare with friends

Search for and enable ‘WeRun’ to have WeChat record your steps daily and check out the leaderboard to see where you rank among your friends. This also allows you to shame the laziest among your friends, unless you happen to be the laziest among your friends.

Change your QR code

A small one, but you can change your personal QR code from the random design assigned to you when signing up. Click on Me – WeChat ID section – My QR Code and press the '…' button in the top right had corner to randomly change the style. There’s a variety of options, including the now famous slice of bread.

Message everybody at once

Last but certainly not least is a feature which either you or all of your friends will wish you had never heard about. WeChat has a feature which allows you to send the same message to all of your contacts at once, a tremendous power which one must not ever take lightly. It’s capped at 200 people per broadcast, though you can make numerous laps to get everybody. To begin making a nuisance of yourself, just search for 'Broadcast Messages' in the chat search box to create a new broadcast. This is one of those features that makes one wish the technology existed to incorporate a breathalyser into a mobile phone. Just because you can do something, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

Now that you've got the hang of WeChat, hit '阅读原文' to learn how to better express yourself.

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