Since being acquired by Facebook in 2014, many of WhatsApp’s feature updates have revolved around encryption and bolstering user privacy. Over the last week, the messaging service took another step in that direction by rolling out a feature to all users, allowing them to revoke sent messages.

WhatsApp has been testing this feature throughout 2017 but with it now out of ‘beta’, all users should receive access. You can delete sent messages up to seven minutes after sending them, after hitting delete, they will disappear from conversations and group chats, according to the WhatsApp support page.

When you go to delete a sent message you should have two options, one to delete the message for everyone in the chat, or to just remove it from your own device. The support page does warn that recipients may see the message before you delete it though and in some cases, they will see it “if deletion was not successful”, so it doesn’t seem to be a guaranteed thing in every case.

KitGuru Says: Being able to remove sent messages is a useful feature to have from time to time, so it’s good to see more chat services implementing it. Those that use Skype or Discord regularly will already be accustomed to having such a feature. How many of you use WhatsApp regularly? Is this a welcome feature, or is it something you won’t be using?

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