Facebook Messenger’s Upcoming Unsend Feature Will Give Users 10 Minutes To Delete A Message

Facebook Messenger is going to allow you to unsend your messages with its new feature. You will have a total of 10 minutes to take back your messages, deleting them from the chat history. And those messages will obviously be deleted from the inbox of the recipients as well.

You can now retract your embarrassing messages you sent on Facebook Messenger

The feature was revealed in the release notes for the latest update of the Facebook Messenger on Apple’s App Store.

The note read:
“Remove a message from a chat thread after it's been sent. If you accidentally send the wrong photo, incorrect information or message the wrong thread, you can easily correct it by removing the message within ten minutes of sending it.”

Currently, you can still delete your messages in your own inboxes, but the recipients can still all of them. Or at least, that is how it worked for the majority of users except for Mark Zuckerberg.

Techcrunch reported in earlier this year that Facebook was wiping Facebook messages that sent by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg from recipients’ inbox. The recipients weren’t even informed before Zuckerberg’s messages wiped from their mailboxes. Facebook did apologize and assured all of its users that they will release a feature that allows them to unsend their messages in the upcoming months.

However, unlike its CEO who could wipe the many-year-old messages, Facebook also allows messages to be retracted and deleted within a ten-minute timeframe.

Another popular messaging app of Facebook, WhatsApp, actually enables its users to delete their messages within much longer time, just more than one hour compared to “10 minutes” of Facebook.

The Gmail’s unsend feature also provides its users the option to choose the time they want to have to take back their emails. You can choose four time intervals from 5 to 30 seconds to retract your emails you should have never sent them in the first place.

The upcoming unsend feature of Facebook for both WhatsApp and Messenger function differently from Gmail’s. It actually holds users’ email in a queue for the chosen time interval. It will not send their emails until the time passes. Meanwhile, the feature of both Facebook’s messaging apps will still send the messages. And of course, the recipients will be able to read your messages until you unsend them within both timeframes Facebook allows for Messenger and WhatsApp.

While Facebook will not give us the ability to wipe year-old messages like Zuckerberg, 10 minutes are still better than no time at all.