WhatsApp already offers the ability to unsend messages after you’ve pressed the all-important ‘send’ button but soon the messaging service could take the feature to the next level.
WABetaInfo has uncovered a new “disappearing messages” feature in version 2.19.275 of the Android app. It’s currently in the early stages of development and could still be subject to change, but in its current form the feature allows you to set messages to delete after either 5 second or an hour leaving no trace of them behind.
Unfortunately, Disappearing Messages appears to be limited to group chats at the moment. Also, to activate it every message in the chat needs to be deleted after the selected timeframe – it can’t simply be limited to a few messages from one person. Nevertheless, this is a functionality that could be added in the future.
Other things that could be added in the future include the option of other timeframes – either 5 seconds or 1 hour is a pretty drastic difference – and compatibility with private WhatsApp conversations where the feature could be limited to just a small group of messages.
It’s unclear when Disappearing Messages will roll out to WhatsApp users but the feature will eventually allow the messaging app to reach parity with Telegram which has offered a Secret Chats feature for quite some time.
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