How to Delete WhatsApp Messages From a Recipient's Inbox After You’ve Sent Them. (Unsend WhatsApp Messages)

It has been a long time coming but now, it’s finally here! A way to unsend messages on WhatsApp. And not just a delayed timer like Gmail implemented for emails, this is the full ability to remove a sent message from a recipient's inbox. The feature everyone who's tasted alcohol dreams of! Undoing regret!

How to Reduce WhatsApp Mobile Data Usage.

Since the beginning of time people have wanted the ability to unsend messages, even before smartphones and computers replaced mail with email, pigeons were shot out the skies in frantic efforts to unsend messages. And in all honesty shooting a flying pigeon from the sky was probably easier than trying to unsend any kind of ‘Instant Message’.

Thankfully, things have recently become a lot easy in this particular area, for WhatsApp users anyway, with the ability to unsend/delete sent messages being added to the service. As good as it is though, there is one limitation to the service, apart from Luck, which is the most important component! And that is you only have 7, magical minutes to recall, delete, unsend your message. After that, it’s sent forever.

This is where Luck plays its part because you never know how quickly a person will open and read your message. The worst part is deleting a message after a user has seen it is going to make you look even worse, so make sure you play your cards right when using WhatsApp’s Unsend message option.

How To Unsend a Sent Message In WhatsApp.

The first thing you need to do in order to start using this feature is update your WhatsApp app. Once you have done that, open it. Assuming you didn’t stumble upon this article in a frantic attempt to unsend something, we will show you how to do a test deletion, so you know exactly how to unsend a WhatsApp Message when the time comes. If that time happens to be right now, you'd better be a quick learner.

Open a chat, any chat will do and send something to someone. When it has sent, long press the message and you will see a list of options appear at the top of the window. From this list, tap the bin/trash icon then select Delete for Everyone. This will instantly delete the message for everyone. If you choose Delete for Me by mistake you will no longer have the ability to Delete for Everyone as the option goes with the message.

Don’t forget you only have 7 magical minutes to make a decision on your message. Oh, and you should also be aware that when you delete a message it doesn’t just vanish, there will be a note left in chat to say a message was deleted. Most importantly don’t forget about Lucks ability to ruin any intentions of deleting a message before it has been seen.

Taking a wild guess, I suspect it won’t be too long before we see a similar unsend message feature added to Facebook Messenger and Instagram DM, as Facebook does own all three services. Until then though, make sure you triple think things through before you send those messages. 

Comments