Earlier this month, WhatsApp officially announced the Disappearing Messages feature for all its users. The feature allow users to send messages that will self-destruct after a predefined period of time. At the time, WhatsApp noted that the feature will start rolling out in November and now the company has completed the rollout, making the feature available to all the WhatsApp users.
If you are interested in trying out Disappearing Messages then you can follow the steps below:
- Open WhatsApp and select a contact.
- Click on the three dots on the top right corner and select 'View contact'
- Select 'Disappearing Messages'
- Select 'On' to turn on Disappearing Messages feature
The Disappearing Messages feature is available for WhatsApp web users as well. They can follow the aforementioned steps on both the web and desktop app to enable or disable the Disappearing Messages feature.
Once enabled, the other party will receive a message notifying them that the feature has been turned on. Earlier this month, WhatsApp published an FAQ page that shed light on the feature. Notably, WhatsApp's Disappearing Messages feature will delete all the messages seven days after they were sent. WhatsApp, however, notes that users can still copy or take a screenshot of the message to save it so it should be used with trusted contacts only. Furthermore, the feature will work with media files as well but if auto-download is enabled then media files will be saved to the gallery even if the corresponding message is deleted from the WhatsApp chat.
The Disappearing Messages feature is available for Android, iOS, KaiOS, Web, and Desktop users. Unfortunately, WhatsApp users cannot define a time duration after which messages will be deleted. However, it is possible that the Facebook-owned firm improves the feature in the future by adding the ability to select a custom duration for the expiration of the messages.
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