The much popular messaging application earlier announced that they will be rolling out a new 'Disappearing Messages' feature, where sent messages disappear after seven days around this month. Now, this particular feature is available for Indian users to avail on their smartphones.
There are still some key points you should know about the feature. Though the feature is for both individual and group chats, only admins can turn on the disappearing feature in groups otherwise your messages won't disappear even though your feature is 'ON'. The feature needs to be switched on for individual chats and if the disappearing message is forwarded to a user with the disappearing message off, then the texts won't go from their chat after seven days.
One should also be wary before turning on the disappearing message feature as the content of disappearing messages like media would disappear from the chatbox but if auto-downloaded to phone or saved in backup, it will remain there so. Also, people can take pictures or screenshots of the message.
As said before the messages will vanish after seven days but it won't apply to your past texts and media.
"This setting won’t affect messages you previously sent or received in the chat," WhatsApp said on its help page.
Here's how you can enable disappearing messages on your WhatsApp:
- On Android and iOS phones, tap on the contact name in your chatbox.
- Along with other info, there will be an option of 'Disappearing messages'.
- Tap on the 'Disappearing messages' option and in the next window turn the option 'ON'.
- For turning the feature off, follow the same steps, and instead of 'ON', tap on the 'OFF' option.
The feature does not provide an option for reducing or increasing the time limit for the message to vanish, the period will remain seven days.
