Whatsapp Will Soon Have 'Self-Destructing Messages' Feature

Facebook-owned WhatsApp introduced "Delete for Everyone" feature two years back presenting a 7 minute limit for deleting the messages. It slowly increased the limit to over an hour. Now the social messaging company is working on a new feature that would enable WhatsApp users to set a self-destruct limit to their sent messages.

As per a report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on self-destructing messages that will automatically get deleted from the chat. These messages will be useful when users who want to share some information but don't want it to stay on record forever. Gmail and Telegram also have a similar feature.

The blog states that WhatsApp's self-destructing messages feature in its alpha stage of development; it has just started working on it. As far as the feature implementation is concerned, as of now, the self-destructing messages feature will be available only in the group chats. To enable this feature, users need to tap on Disappearing Messages option in the Group Settings. After which, users will be asked to choose a time limit after which messages will get deleted automatically. Currently, WhatsApp is offering 5 seconds and 1-hour options to the users; in between, there is no time frame given.

After enabling this option, the sent message will automatically get deleted without leaving any trace of it. This feature as of now is only available for group chat. WhatsApp may later add this feature for private conversations as well. If you an Android smartphone user, you can try your luck and download WhatsApp Beta for Android version 2.19.175 to try this feature. If you are unable to use this feature even after downloading this version, don't bother about it. As WhatsApp has not rolled out this feature to all its beta users yet.