In its most recent update, WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature called ‘
delete for everyone’ which allows you delete or retract sent messages for all participants of the chat. In the IM ecosystem, message retraction isn’t quite a new thing. Chat apps like BBM already introduced the feature some years back. However, the more than 1 billion people that use WhatsApp are happy to have this feature. Seems everyone has a few things they’d like to unsay.
The deleted message disappears from both your phone and that of your recipient. This is handy if you text someone mistakenly, or make a typo, or maybe you tried leaving the friend zone by popping in a quick ‘I love you’ while texting whoever, it’s your lucky year, you can delete all that now.
A few things to note though:
- You can only delete the message 7 minutes after sending it. Once 7 minutes is gone, you can no longer use the ‘delete for everyone’ feature.
- There’s a chance your recipient already read the message before you decided to get rid of it. At least they won’t be able to take a screenshot of it.
- There’s no ‘message successfully deleted’ However, you’d see a “This message was deleted”or “You deleted this message” text in place of the message you deleted.
- If you or your recipient are not using the latest version of WhatsApp for Android, iPhone or Windows Phone, this feature will not be supported.
How to use the feature:
- Go to your app store (Android, iOS, or Windows), and update your WhatsApp messenger app.
- Open the chat you want to delete a message from on your WhatsApp messenger.
- Tap and hold the message. You can select multiple messages to delete.
- Tap Delete at the top of the screen, then select ‘Delete for everyone.’
- Voila! The message will leave the chat immediately.
Photo: Rahul Ramachandram / Shutterstock.com
