WhatsApp’s disappearing messages feature is no longer as good as it once was because recipients can now choose to keep the temporary message – but with a catch.
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new modification to the chat app’s nuke-after-reading feature in a broadcast message shared on his Instagram channel.
The development of the world’s most used chat app has been referred to as a sender superpower, and if it runs as described, it will continue to give the sender authority over the message’s ultimate fate. This is because the sender is notified when a recipient attempts to save a message, and the sender has the option to choose whether it should vanish or be preserved. Quite a nice catch for those who were worried…
However, if you choose to retain a disappearing message, what is the purpose of sending it as a disappearing message in the first place? Anyway, let’s hope that the rollout is faster than the Community feature, which took more than 18 months before it became available.
NB: At one time, you could actually screenshot a message that had been sent to be viewed once. However, this was fixed with an update, and the world was happy.
Notes
- The update is currently being rolled out to WhatsApp beta, which you can choose to opt-in from Google Play. The beta version of the app can also allow you to access WhatsApp on more than one smartphone as we discussed here.
- It will be available to all users in the coming weeks.
- The update will allow recipients of disappearing messages to keep them by pressing and holding them. The sender will then be alerted to allow or disallow such an action.
- WhatsApp is not the only messaging app that offers disappearing messages; other apps, such as Signal and Telegram, also offer this feature.
