WhatsApp Delete for Everyone aka recall message finally rolling out and here's how it works

in #news7 years ago

Hello Steemit Friends
After a very long wait, WhatsApp's recall message feature aka Delete for Everyone is finally here. WaBetaInfo, the fan site for WhatsApp, has announced that the chat app is finally rolling out the feature to Android, iOS and Windows phone users.

Starting today, iOS, Android and Windows phone users can recall the wrongly sent messages or messages that are mistakenly sent to the other chats. WaBetaInfo notes that the roll out is slow and both the recipient and sender should be on the same updated version of WhatsApp to get the feature working. The feature works for GIFs, texts, images, voice messages, locations, stickers (in future), contact cards, quoted messages and status replies.

In other words what this mean is that you will get the Delete For Everyone feature in the coming days. The rollout will happen gradually and given the fact that there are over 1 billion WhatsApp users, it may take up to a week or even more before it shows up in the WhatsApp in your phone.

How does the Delete for Everyone works?
For now there is no official word. But from what people on the web have figured out so far, it seems that the Delete For Everyone works similar to how Gmail Undo works. It seems that when the feature is enabled and when you revoke a message, WhatsApp would send a copy of the your message to the receiver. When the recipient receives that false copy, his phone won't show you the notification and it won't save it in his chat history. However, it will check if there is the ID of the message in the database: on the off chance that it will discover the message, the message will be recalled.

Also, it is important to note that the Delete For Everyone is going to be a time-sensitive feature. Users will be able to recall messages only within seven minutes of sending it. If a message is not recalled within 7 seven minutes, users will not be able to recall it.

The Delete for Everyone feature doesn't work for...

--Message contained in a quoted message cannot be revoked.

-- It's not possible to delete for everyone messages sent in a Broadcast List.

-- Messages can be recalled only within a 7 minutes of time frame after which you cannot recall or revoke it.

-- The feature works only if both sender and receiver are using the updated version of WhatsApp. WhatsApp will enable the delete for everyone feature working for older versions too, but obviously not for very old version where Delete for Everyone hasn't been implemented yet. -- The feature does not work for Symbian OS.

The feature is a slow roll out. You may receive the activation message any time but in case you don't then uninstall and reinstall the app. You can also go to WhatsApp's Setting> Chats>Backup and perform it.