The latest moves by Facebook to tie WhatsApp users more closely to Facebook haven’t gone down too well on the net. The result is a fair number of people who are planning or who have already left WhatsApp for more private shores. The problem is, how to let your contacts know you now prefer to use Signal, Telegram or any of the other more private messaging apps? Step up the free open source Watomatic app. This nifty little tool lets you set up an automatic response to all WhatsApp messages, which informs the writer that you have now moved on to another messaging service.
It’s simple, straightforward and does what it says on the tin. You can set up a straight auto-response, or put it on a timer so you don’t annoy people, and you can set your own choice of words. Like “Sorry folks, I’m no longer using WhatsApp, come find me on Signal.” Nice. There are no ads or tracking and in true open source style, you can find the source code to the app at the Github repository. We’re loving the whole idea!