WhatsApp Launches New Feature That Lets You Set New Chats To Disappear
WhatsApp has announced that its disappearing messages feature is finally getting the anticipated disappearing chat functionality. WhatsApp users will now be able to turn on disappearing messages for all new chats, meaning the entire chat will disappear automatically after the set time, which can be 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days.
“Not all messages need to stick around forever,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Facebook announcing the new disappearing messages option on WhatsApp.
Previously, the time for disappearing messages was just 24 hours, but WhatsApp has introduced two more options to the regular disappearing messages, as well. These ephemeral chats will also be deleted from WhatsApp servers, the company said.
When you turn on disappearing messages for all one-on-one chats, your existing messages or chats will not be affected. Similarly, the option of disappearing messages for the entire chat will not impact existing group conversations, but you can send disappearing messages to the group by turning disappearing messages on from the group settings anytime. However, the admin of the group can restrict the privileges of turning the feature only to admins to stop misuse. New group chats can, however, be set to disappear with the new option.
After you have turned on disappearing messages for all your new chats, a notification that the feature is turned on will appear inside the chat. The notification will also say that disappearing messages are turned on by default, just so your contact does not think you used that feature for them specifically.
Even though the disappearing messages feature comes off as a nifty feature that will destroy all the messages after their purpose is served, WhatsApp warns that it should be used with trusted contacts. That is because the feature has some loopholes. For example, if you forward a disappearing message to another chat, the message will not go away. You can also take a screenshot of the conversation and save the entire chat to your phone’s gallery. Taking a photo of the chat screen with a camera or a different phone is also an option.
And besides these loopholes, there are some other limitations, too. WhatsApp has mentioned that if you do not open the chat with disappearing messages in the 24-hour, 7-day, and 90-day period, messages will disappear from the chat but not from the notifications until you open them. Replying to a disappearing message using a quote will also retain the message in the chat bubble. Any backups of disappearing messages will also save the messages.