WhatsApp making a big change in its ‘Delete for Everyone’ feature

WhatsApp, earlier this year, launched its much-awaited feature ‘Delete for Everyone’ that allows users to revoke messages if they’ve been sent to the wrong person or group. But now the company is making a big change into this widely-popular feature.

At the time of the launch, users were allowed to delete/recall a message within 7 minutes of sending it. Later, the company increased this limit to 1 hour 8 minutes and 16 seconds. Now the company is reportedly planning to change this feature further for better user experience.

According to WABetaInfo, the Twitter account that regularly monitors the instant messaging platform, the company is rolling out a new update after which if the recipient of a message has not received the delete request for a message within 13 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds then the message will not be deleted.

This essentially means users cannot delete a message for everyone if the recipient does not receive the revoke request in 13 hours, 8 minutes and 16 seconds. The website says this may happen when the recipient has switched off the phone.

“What does it mean? If you delete a message for everyone, but the recipient won’t receive the revoke request within 13h, 8m, 16s (maybe because the phone was off), the message will **not** be revoked. This is a protection against modded users that revoked messages sent weeks, months and years ago. You can still delete a message for everyone within 1h, 8m, 16s as long as the recipient will receive your revoke request within 13h, 8m, 16s,” goes the tweet.

The feature is expected to roll out in the coming days along with the stickers update in WhatsApp, according to the report.

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Reasoning the move, the tweet from WABetaInfo adds that the change is intended to be a protection against modded users that revoke messages sent weeks, months and years ago. With this feature the company aims to ensure that the modified version of the app does not manipulate the time of days, weeks and months for ‘delete for everyone feature. Moreover, all the request for delete works in the background and the user don’t have to do anything on the front end.