WhatsApp has lifted the veil of a feature that is much needed and likely to be a popular choice by users – Accidental Delete. This feature, like its name suggests, is a remedy that allows for side-stepping several awkward and embarrassing situations by giving users the ability to undo the “Delete for Me” option.
All of us WhatsApp users can relate to this. There are instances when you send messages to the wrong person or wrong group, and in the haste to delete the messages before the person(s) can view them, often end up clicking the “Delete for Me” option instead of “Delete for Everyone”. To save face and the embarrassment that entails thereafter, the new ‘Accidental Delete’ solution will bringing the option to undo the “Delete for Me” action.
The Accidental Delete feature offers users a window of five seconds to undo the “Delete for Me” action, both in case of sending the message(s) to the wrong individual or the wrong chat. The next time users delete a message, they will see a small dialog box that comes with the message “Message deleted for me,” along with a small “Undo” button. Clicking on the button will bring back the message that the user (accidentally) deleted on their own.
According to WhatsApp, this much-needed feature will be available to all users on Android and iOS and comes after it has been in beta testing for several months. According to an earlier report by WABetaInfo this August, the Meta-owned free messaging service was testing the feature alongside the ability that would let users view status updates of their contacts from their chat list itself.
This development comes alongside WhatsApp working on a new “Keep Messages” feature. As the name suggests, it will allow users to undo disappearing messages and successfully “keep” the messages in the chat. It is currently under development, though, so it might take a while for it to come to our smartphones. And when a kept message is undone, then it is automatically deleted for everyone and cannot be recovered in the future.
