The messaging app is expected to soon roll out the “Disappearing Messages” feature as pe the Wabetainfo, the website that updates WhatsApp news for iOS, Android and Windows.
According to Wabetainfo, the Facebook-owned company will unveil its new feature with one of the upcoming updates.
What’s special about this new feature?
WhatsApp users will be allowed to enable the feature any time they want. However, you won’t have the option to customize the time once the feature is enabled.
“Disappearing Messages,” all the new messages will expire after seven days. You cannot set time as to when you want them to disappear. Also, if you don’t open the chat for seven days, then the messages will disappear. Note that if you haven’t cleared the notification panel, then you will be able to check the messages there.
Remember in a group chat, only the admins will get to use the feature. The Disappearing Messages feature will be available for iOS, Android, KaiOS, and Web/Desktop users. It won’t be enabled by default and to use it, you will have to enable it manually.
“When you reply to a message, the initial message is quoted. If you reply to a disappearing message, the quoted text might remain in the chat after seven days. If a disappearing message is forwarded to a chat with disappearing messages off, the message won’t disappear in the forwarded chat,” Wabetainfo reported.
It’s surprising that you may still forward or take a screenshot of the disappearing messages, and you will also be allowed to save disappearing images and videos in your camera roll. For this, there will be Save to Camera Roll option, which you have to manually enable.
Is there a way to retrieve chats?
As per the source, if you backup chats before they disappear, then you will find them on Google Drive. However, if you intend to restore the disappearing messages from a backup, you won’t be able to track the messages because it will get deleted.