WhatsApp might soon offer a feature that lets you post a message that vanishes after a while. Messages that self-destruct, of course, have been staple fare in espionage, but this is a logical extension of the platform’s current option of deleting a message within a time limit. The downside is that it’s apparently not all that subtle.
In a chat, it still appears as a notification, with a note informing the other chat members that “This message was deleted”. Now it looks like the app is testing a self-destruct feature that would allow you to set a timer for messages in a specific chat and they will disappear after an allotted amount of time.
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As far as the implementation of the feature is concerned, the disappearing messages feature is available only in the group chats as of now. Users can tap on Disappearing Messages option in the Group Settings to enable this feature. There are currently two countdown options — 5 seconds and 1 hour – to users. There is no time frame in between.
Disappearing messages could be useful to anyone who needs to send a sensitive piece of information that they don’t want to be permanently available. We’ve previously seen the feature used by the messaging app Telegram, which lets you send self-destructing messages using the app’s Secret Chats feature.
We’re still not sure when exactly WhatsApp plans to roll out this feature, or even if they’ll push it out at all. Separately, the blog site also confirmed that WhatsApp is working to bring dark mode to its iOS based app. It’s about time these features arrived on the WhatsApp client and we hope it’ll be pushed out soon.
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