Facebook owned instant messaging giant WhatsApp is likely to roll out the much-awaited and much-demanded ‘disappearing message’ option to its users soon. Here is all you wanted to know.
Disappearing messages allows users to send and receive messages that will disappear after a certain time limit. These messages were will be particularly useful when users want to share some information over the social messaging platform but don’t want it to stay on record forever. A similar feature is available on GMail and Telegram as well.
If a recent leak by WABeta — a website known for tracking upcoming changes in WhatsApp — is to be believed, the feature might appear on its Android version soon. WhatsApp has recently submitted a new update through the Google Play Beta Program, bringing the version up to 2.19.275, the website said. An iOS version might hit the App Store at a later point in time.
The feature is still in testing phase and the final look, feel and functionality is not confirmed yet. It is not visible to users as of now. WhatsApp is just starting to work on it, and no estimated time of arrival is available to know when the feature will be available for everyone.
According to the screenshot shared by WABeta, the feature will first be launched in group chat. Later, it might get extended to private chats as well. In the groups too, it may not be rolled out to everyone. Only the group admins are likely to get access to it initially. It might get extended to other members of groups over a period of time. The feature is set to appear in ‘group settings’ which is accessible only to group admins.
The new feature lets users set expiration time for messages. As of now, it appears that users may get to choose between five seconds or 1 hour. Besides, users will have the option of ‘all’ or ‘none’ to choose. It essentially means that once the feature is enabled, all messages will be removed after a chosen time in that chat. This also means that users will not be able to use disappearing messages option on individual messages.
After ‘disappearing messages’ option is selected, WhatsApp will show several options to select from. After enabling this option, any message will be automatically removed and there will be no tracks available in the chat about deleted messages. At thing stand, when the chat is marked as ‘disappeared’, all messages will be automatically removed after a certain interval. The user can mark the chat as ‘disappeared’ by enabling the option ‘Disappearing messages’ in Group Info.