WhatsApp Lets You Undo ‘Delete For Me’ In Case You Hit That Button Too Quickly

WhatsApp has introduced a feature to undo the “Delete for Me” action to save you from being potentially embarrassed over accidentally deleting a message only for you that you wanted to pull for everyone on the app.

The new feature, called “accidental delete,” brings a five-second window to let users reverse the action of deleting messages for their own in an individual or group chat and delete them for everyone.

Users sometimes land in a situation when they accidentally tap the “Delete for Me” button instead of “Delete for Everyone” to delete a wrongly sent message. The new feature aims to help users overcome those situations by getting the small window to reverse their original action.

WhatsApp said its new offering would be available to all users on Android and iPhone. It was beta tested with some Android and iOS users in August, per a report by WhatsApp features tracker WABetaInfo.

In 2017, WhatsApp introduced the “Delete for Everyone” option to let users recall a message for all people in a conversation. The feature was designed to address the issue of sending messages mistakenly in individual and group chats. Although the initial rollout of the option was limited to seven minutes, WhatsApp eventually extended that time limit to up to two days and 12 hours — or 60 hours — in August this year. Find out more below.

WhatsApp extends time limit to delete a message to 60 hours

WhatsApp now allows you to delete a message for up to two days and 12 hours (60 hours in total), so you can remove an accidentally sent chat even after hours. Previously, this limit was 1 hour, 8 minutes and 16 seconds — yep, there were seconds involved.

The company’s tweet about this feature just mentioned “little over two days” but didn’t specify the 12-hour part.

WhatsApp first introduced the unsend feature back in 2017 with a time limit of just seven minutes but later increased it to one hour and eight minutes. Last year, WABetaInfo noted that the company might consider introducing a seven-day limit, but with this new update, it has chosen a rather odd time frame of two and a half days.

Also: How To Transfer Whatsapp Data To A New Android Phone Without Google Drive

In comparison, rival chat app Telegram has no limit on deleting a message, so you can remove a chat years after sending it. Apple is moving in the other direction; after introducing the unsend feature for iOS 16 at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, the company reduced the limit from 15 minutes to two minutes in the fourth version of the iOS 16 developer beta last month.

WhatsApp is also introducing new privacy features to its app including blocking screenshots for “view-once messages” and the ability to leave a group silently.

Source: Techcrunch