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No Fear No Favour

Now WhatsApp allows you to delete messages after you’ve sent them; Here’s how to do it

Have you been frequently land in the vicious circle of embarrassment after you send that wrong message to the wrong person on Whatsapp? Well, fright not anymore. WhatsApp has started rolling a feature to call back your sent messages to the wrong person.

The facebook-owned messaging app is rolling out a feature that will finally let its 1 billion-plus users delete a message for all people within a conversation.

Until now, the delete message feature is useless as it only removes a message for the person who sent it. That means the person on the other end can still read it. But this latest update will give the option to “delete for everyone,” which will delete the message from the person which the message is not intended to. Instead, they will see a notification explaining the message has been removed.

The feature is still rolling out, so not everyone has it yet: I don’t, but at least one of my TechCrunch colleagues does. More details can be found on the company’s FAQ page:

To delete messages for everyone Deleting messages for everyone allows you to delete specific messages you have sent to either a group or an individual chat. This is particularly useful if you sent a message to the wrong chat or if the message you sent contains a mistake.

Messages you successfully delete for everyone will be replaced with “This message was deleted” in your recipients’ chats (*). Similarly, if you see “This message was deleted” in a chat, it means that the sender deleted their message for everyone.

You can only delete messages for everyone for up to seven minutes after sending. Once seven minutes have passed, there is no way to delete messages for everyone.

The sole problem here is that all the conversation participants must have the latest version of WhatsApp installed on their device. That’s a pretty major deal-breaker at this point but, as time goes by and more people update their app, the option to undo those embarrassing mis-messages will apply to more and more conversations.

How to delete a WhatsApp message

1. Open WhatsApp and go to the chat containing the message you wish to delete.

2. Tap and hold the message. Optionally, tap more messages to delete multiple messages at once.

3. Tap Delete at the top of the screen > Delete for everyone.

WhatsApp cautions that your friends may still read your message before it’s deleted. And, of course, they can always screengrab it before you’re able to banish it to the digital netherworld.

Most WhatsApp users will agree that this update is long overdue.

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