10 useful features of "VKontakte" that you might not know about

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Non-obvious functions and tricks that will be useful to users of the social network.

1. Sending a message to yourself

Sending a message to yourself is the easiest way to make a quick note or reminder to come back to later. In the VKontakte social network, you just need to type your name and surname in the chat list in the Messages section and select the proposed contact.

In a similar way, by the way, using messages to yourself, you can conveniently upload various files and documents to the Network so that you can access them from any device with VKontakte.

2. Reading community posts without subscribing

If you want to hide information that you are subscribed to a certain community, it is not at all necessary to change your privacy settings. You can read the posts of the community you need even after unsubscribing from it.

To do this, while you are subscribed to the page you need, open the "News" section. On the top right under your avatar, click on the "+" icon and select "Add tab". You will see a list of all your contacts and groups, where you need to select the required page. All that remains is to name the tab and save it.

After that, even if you unsubscribe, new entries in this community will always be at hand in the "News" section on the tab you created.

3. Search for e-books and abstracts

Few people know that the VKontakte social network can be used to search for e-books. Just go to the "Documents" section and type in the search box the name of the work you are interested in. Suitable options will be displayed below.

To narrow the search circle and avoid the appearance of images and gifs in the search results, you can specify the format you are interested in after the name separated by a space: DOC, PDF, EPUB, and so on. You can search this way not only for e-books, but also for abstracts, reports, term papers, examples of documents, and in general everything that can be stored in text format.

4. Fast sending of audio recordings

To share your favorite track with someone, you don't have to go to Messages, search for the desired contact and attach an audio recording to the message. This can be done directly from the player in the upper bar. You just need to open the playlist and hover over the ellipsis to the right of the desired track by clicking on "Share". All that remains is to choose who you want to send the audio to.

If you need to quickly send several songs at once, then first you need to go to the message and select entries there while holding down the Ctrl key on Windows or Command on Mac. This will allow you to immediately select a group of compositions and attach them all at once.

5. Sending gifts to yourself

It is quite possible to increase the number of gifts received without any help. To do this, you will need a mobile version of the VKontakte website. You can access it directly in the browser on your PC by simply adding m. before vk to the desktop version. In the next tab, open the usual version of your page and in its settings from the address column, copy your original numeric page number - id.

In the mobile version, go to gifts and select any user as the recipient. In the gift selection window in the browser address bar, replace the recipient's number with your own copied earlier. After pressing Enter, you should remain on the gift selection page, but for another addressee - for yourself.

6. Getting votes for free

Gifts and stickers on social networks are bought for votes, and those, in turn, can be bought for real money. However, there is a way to get them without real investment. To do this, in your page settings, you need to go to the "Payments and Transfers" section and click "Top up balance". In the window that opens, select "Special offers".

The offers page always displays various tasks from advertisers, by completing which you will receive a certain number of votes. This is mainly installing applications, joining groups and small tests.

7. Beautiful links to pages and groups

In messages, comments and any records, links to pages of communities and users can be beautifully "hidden" in words. A simple @ sign is used for this. In the case of a link to a page, after it you need to specify an id and then, without a space in brackets, the word that will be clickable. An example and result is in the screenshot above.

Similarly, you can give links to groups, however, if instead of a short identifier, the original numeric number is used, then the word club must be added before it. In the case of original user ids, it's important to add the id as well. For example: @club **** (Link text), @id **** (Link text). You can even put a smiley instead of the link text.

8. Subscribing to comments

Even if you are not participating in the discussion of a post in a group or on someone else's page, you can follow the comments of other users. Just select the post you want, at the bottom, hover the cursor on "More" → "Subscribe to comments". You can see them in the news section.

9. Strikethrough words and empty messages

VKontakte does not provide an opportunity to format the message text by changing its size or font, but you can use strikethrough characters. To do this, before each letter in a word, insert the following set of characters: ̶.

With the help of another set, you can even send an empty message at all:

… The same code is suitable when filling out data about yourself, if you want to leave some of the lines empty.

10. Deleting and editing sent messages

Perhaps someone missed the recent appearance of functions for deleting or editing already sent messages. You can correct the text of the message using the pencil icon that appears to the right of the text when you hover over the message. After the change, the “(Ed.)” Mark will appear, signaling to other participants in the correspondence that the changes have been made.

You can delete an already sent message by clicking on the trash can icon that appears at the top of the chat when a message is selected.

Important: you can edit and delete within 24 hours after sending. If you do this later, then the changes will be displayed only on your computer, but not on the interlocutors.