WhatsApp to allow people to delete messages for everyone long after they are sent

The minimum time will go up from seven minutes to an hour

Tuesday 06 March 2018 12:26

Revellers dressed up as dancers of 'Black Swan' check their mobile phones next to revellers dressed up as a Whatsapp logo as they take part in New Year's celebrations in Coin, near Malaga, southern Spain, early January 1, 2015

(REUTERS/Jon Nazca)

WhatsApp is making a significant change to the way it lets people "unsend" messages.

Until now, the app has allowed people to take back messages they sent by accident or that they later regretted. But it has given people a very strict time to do so: messages can only be recalled for the seven minutes after they are sent out.

That is about to change in a new update to the app, however, reports the site WABetaInfo. It has found indications in early code of the app that it will allow people to delete messages as much as 4,096 seconds, or 68 minutes and 16 seconds, to delete messages.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Show all 12

1/1212 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Unsend messages

You can unsend a message by tapping and holding it, hitting the Delete symbol and selecting Delete for Everyone. The feature works for all types of messages, but only if they were sent less than seven minutes ago.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Dodge the blue ticks

WhatsApp’s blue ticks show when sent messages have been read, but you can disable them buy going to Settings > Account > Privacy > Read Receipts. However, bear in mind that, by doing so, you’ll lose the ability to see when your own sent messages have been read. Another, more fiddly way of reading your messages without triggering the blue ticks, is enabling Aeroplane Mode before opening your messages - just remember to close the app before switching Aeroplane Mode off again.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Hide your 'last seen' time

Prevent your friends from finding out when you were last online by hiding your last seen time. Go to Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen. As is the case with disabling read receipts, hiding your ‘last seen’ time will also stop you from seeing anybody else’s.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Limit data usage

You can control how much data you munch through on WhatsApp by limiting the types of media you automatically download on a mobile connection. Go to Settings > Data Usage and choose the best option for you.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Customise notifications

If you’re expecting an important WhatsApp message from someone, set a custom notification for them by opening the chat, tapping their name at the top and hitting Custom Notifications.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Format your messages

To jazz up any of your messages, simply highlight it by tapping and holding it, hit the More Options key on the pop-up menu and tap the formatting option you want - bold, italic, strikethrough or monospace.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Type hands-free

You can get Siri or Google Assistant to type your WhatsApp messages out for you by saying either “Hey Siri” or “Okay Google”, followed by the name of the person you want to message and the actual contents of the message.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Mark chats as unread

When you’ve read a message but can’t reply to it straight away, you can set a visual reminder by marking it as unread. On Android, long-press the conversation, and on iOS, swipe from left to right on a chat.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Email entire conversations

You almost certainly won’t do this on a regular basis, but it’s a handy option to have. You can export entire conversations - complete with emoji and media attachments - by hitting More inside a chat a selecting Email Chat.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Mass-message contacts

You can send the same message to lots of your contacts without lumping them all into one group, much like the BCC option on email, by hitting the New Broadcast option on the app’s main menu.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Pin conversations

You pin up to three contacts and groups to the top of your WhatsApp conversation list by tapping and holding a chat, then hitting the pin icon.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Make things easier to find

You can easily mark key messages with a star, allowing you to find them easily when you need to. Just tap and hold a message and hit the star icon to save it, and return to it later by selecting Starred Messages in WhatsApp’s main menu.

Some features do initiallly roll out in the beta but don't find their way to the public release. But this change is likely to make its way into the main version of WhatsApp on both Android and iOS, depending on how it is received.

Other major features remain in beta but could make their way to the platform soon. They include an indication that messages have been forwarded on, for instance – a change that is thought to be intended to reduce the amount of spam and fake stories that are passed around on the app.

WhatsApp took some time to actually introduce the feature, which only arrived properly towards the end of last year. Users had been requesting the feature for some time, and it has been present on other platforms for much longer.

The company has been cautious in the way it has introduced the delete for everyone feature. Unlike some other apps like Telegram, the message can't be entirely deleted – a message will stay in the chat saying that something has been removed, though the contents are obviously deleted – and the time limit has been there since the beginning.

Join our new commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies