WhatsApp Now Allows You to Set Messages to Delete by Default

Dec. 7, 2021

WhatsAppintroduced the ability to send disappearing messageslast year for people to choose the chats they don’t want to keep. With an aim to further extend this feature’s capabilities, theMeta-ownedmessaging app now lets you set the disappearing messages option as the default. Not just that, you can even choose multiple durations for this feature, extending up to 90 days.

New WhatsApp Disappearing Message Features Added

With the Default Disappearing Messages feature, all your new chats on WhatsApp will be set to disappearing modeby default. Whenever you chat with a person for the first time, the messages will vanish after a set time. This is applicable fornew group chats as well. While creating a new group, you will get an option to switch on the disappearing messages mode.

When the disappearing messages mode is on by default, WhatsApp will display a message on each chat, indicating that the option is chosen as a default setting. It is to clarify that the feature is your choice and not a forced setting by the app.

One thing to note is thatthis is optionaland you can always turn it off. Plus, you can also decide to select the people you want to send disappearing messages to. If you want to keep their chats intact, you can always disable the feature via each chat’s settings. To recall, you canenable or disable this featureby heading to any chat of your choice -> tapping on the person’s name -> selecting the “Disappearing messages” option.

In addition to this, two new duration options for disappearing messages have been added. You can now select theduration of 24 hours and 90 days. That means the messages will disappear either after 24 hours or 90 days, depending upon the choice you make. These two options are in addition to the existing option of 7 days in WhatsApp.

To enable the disappearing messages feature by default, head over toSettings -> Account -> Privacy -> Default message timerand choose your duration.

WhatsApp alsohighlights a few pointsyou should know of.

The new features have now started rolling out to Android users, but there’s a ton of privacy limitations, as you can see above. We couldn’t get hold of the features on iOS but maybe because they will eventually reach all users. Do you have access to the new WhatsApp features? Let us know your experience in the comments below.

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