Use this small but nifty little hack to read new messages without unlocking your phone and going into WhatsApp. Simply turn on notifications by following these steps:
Open WhatsApp and click on “settings,” then “notifications.”
Toggle on “use high priority notifications.”
When you receive texts, they will show as message previews without you even having to open the app.
Unless you use the message to open WhatsApp, the recipient will not know you’ve read it, even if you have read receipts turned on.
Another temporary hack you can use is to view the message through Airplane mode. When you receive a message and see the preview through the notification panel, you may not be able to see all of it if it’s a longer message or series of messages. In this case, you can enable Airplane mode then open the message fully on WhatsApp.
However, in this case, the moment you turn on data or connect to WiFi again, the read receipts will appear as blue ticks. Airplane mode will only delay the blue ticks which will eventually appear.