Error when mentioning in WhatsApp on my iPhone 16 Pro Max

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Level 1

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Error when mentioning in WhatsApp on my iPhone 16 Pro Max

Hey there! So, I was trying to mention my friend in our group chat today, but I couldn’t do it the usual way. I named his contact ‘Jackson’ and his default profile name is ‘CoolMan’. Normally, I just type @jackson or @Jackson to mention him, but today I needed to type @coolman suddenly. Typing @jackson didn’t work. I tried reaching out to WhatsApp about this issue, but their AI chatbot didn’t seem to have any helpful solutions.

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iPhone 16 Pro Max, iOS 18

Posted on May 4, 2025 6:41 AM

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Answer 1

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SravanKrA

Level 10

432,536 points

May 4, 2025 7:58 AM in response to NixenJ

ChatGPT says:

WhatsApp mentions in group chats (@name) use the name the person has set as their own profile name—not the name you saved them as in your contacts.

So even if you saved your friend as "Jackson", if he set his profile name to "CoolMan", WhatsApp will only recognize @coolman as a valid mention.

Why did it work before with @jackson?

Most likely, he used to have "Jackson" as his profile name, and then recently changed it to "CoolMan." When that happened, WhatsApp updated how you can mention him.

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