Facebook Messenger to get an unsend feature

A long awaited feature to Facebook Messenger is imminent that will allow users to delete messages after they’ve been sent.

The feature was soon announced back in April 2018 after controversy ensued after it was revealed that Facebook had removed messages from founder Mark Zuckerberg from the inboxes of other users.

Back then, Facebook vaguely announced that the feature would be coming to Facebook users in “several months”. And the release notes of the next update to Facebook Messenger reveal that an ‘unsend’ feature is in the imminent future.

The feature will allow Facebook users to delete messages send in chat messages, making them unavailable to people in that chat. Users will need to be quick, though, since the feature only works 10 minutes after the message has been sent. After that, the message is there for good.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

That’s a short amount of time when compared to Facebook-owned WhatsApp, that gives its users up to an hour to delete messages.

In the release notes, Facebook describes the new feature as such –

Coming soon: 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.

Of course, this doesn’t mean users should be more cavalier with what they send. As Snapchat users most likely know by now, is that there is little stopping the recipient of a message from hitting the screenshot button to take a photo of your message as soon as its send. Other evidence of a message may also exist, if recipients get email alerts when users send them a chat message.

The feature is being rolled out imminently, so expect it to hit your Facebook Messenger app soon.