WhatsApp now allows you to delete a message for up to two days and 12 hours (60 hours in total), so you can delete an accidentally sent chat even after hours. Previously, this limit was 1 hour, 8 minutes and 16 seconds – yes, there were seconds involved.
The company’s tweet about the feature just mentioned “a little over two days” but didn’t specify the 12-hour work.
WhatsApp first introduced the unsend feature in 2017 with a time limit of just seven minutes, but later extended it to one hour and eight minutes. Last year, WABetaInfo warned that the company might consider introducing a seven-day limit, but with this new update, it chose a rather odd time frame of two and a half days.
In comparison, rival chat app Telegram has no message deletion restrictions, so you can delete a chat years after you sent it. Apple is going the other way; after introducing the undo send feature for iOS 16 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, the company reduced the limit from 15 minutes to two minutes in the fourth iOS 16 developer beta last month.
WhatsApp is also rolling out new privacy features to its app, including blocking screenshots to “view messages” and the ability to silently leave a group.