WhatsApp gives more than two days' time to delete a message sent to an individual or group

Messages sent using WhatsApp can now be deleted more than 48 hours after they were sent. Until today, WhatsApp users had just an hour to decide.

WhatsApp confirmed on Twitter that users need not rush to delete any message. In case a user wants to delete a message, they have “a little over 2 days” to delete messages from chat history after they have hit send.

The ability to delete a message isn’t new. However, WhatsApp has significantly extended the timeframe. Deleting a message is quite easy too. Open up the WhatsApp group or individual chat in which the message was sent. Tap and hold the content to delete and click “Delete”. Users are presented with the options “Delete for everyone” or “Delete for me.”

Until today, WhatsApp users had the aforementioned options for just an hour after they had hit send. However, moving forward, users will have more than 2 days to delete the messages.

It is important to note that all recipients must be updated to the most recent version of WhatsApp in order for this to work. Additionally, users who delete the messages they sent for everyone, won’t receive a notification if the messages didn’t delete for one or all of the recipients.

Deleting messages intentionally is different from “Disappearing Messages”. While messages can be individually and selectively deleted, activating the Disappearing Messages feature will automatically erase messages after a preset time period from arriving in the chat. Incidentally, WhatsApp users have had the choice of making disappearing messages the default option on all new chats since December 2021.