WhatsApp will allow you to delete sent messages. Here's how it'll work
WhatsApp has finally heard our collective calls and decided to roll out the much-awaited feature to delete sent messages. "Delete for Everyone" enables not only the deletion of sent messages from the sender's end, but also allows for revoking them at the receivers' end.
WaBetaInfo, a fan site for WhatsApp, in a report, first observed that the popular messaging application had planned the feature for Android, iOS and Windows phone platforms.
According to the report, "Delete for Everyone" will let people recall messages within seven minutes of sending them. Earlier, reports had suggested that WhatsApp had been trialing the feature with its testers, but it now looks like the feature is live for a small group of users.
Though it has been confirmed by WhatsApp in its updated FAQ page, the feature's activation may be very slow and it could be a while before all users can try it.
How does it work?
According to the report, when you revoke a message, "WhatsApp sends a fake copy of the message to the receiver. When the recipient receives that false copy, his phone won't show you the notification and it won't save it in his chat history. However, it will check if there is the ID of the message in the database: on the off chance that it will discover the message, the message will be recalled".
The report further adds that the recalled message will be also deleted in the notifications center (on iOS) of the recipient at the exact moment you have revoked it, while on Android the message will be updated with the “This message was deleted for everyone” text.
But before you can go about deleting messages, be sure that both the sender and the recipient have the latest version of WhatsApp installed on their phones.
Why should you be excited?
This particular feature has been one that has remained on many a wishlist for long, and will come as great news for those unsure of using WhatsApp for the fear of wrongly sending messages to a different chat, or maybe sending something that they didn't intend to in the first place.
Interestingly, the revoking of messages isn't just limited to text and also works for photos, videos, GIFS, contact cards, etc but WhatsApp has decided not to enable the functionality for quoted messages or broadcast messages. Thankfully, people can revoke messages in group as well as individual chats.
WhatsApp, of late, has been on a feature rollout spree, and for better or for worse, recently launched a new feature called Live Location Sharing – an update which was met with mixed reactions from its more than a billion-strong user base across the globe. But with this new feature, no backlash is expected as it gives users more power over the content they share and with whom they share it.
Though the update has been rolled out silently, it could prove to be one of the most important changes to the messaging platform in the past few months. WhatsApp's parent company Facebook has already had this feature for a while — and with its latest move, the messaging app has moved one step closer to integrating the editing of sent messages.