WhatsApp has made an exciting announcement today that has been eagerly anticipated by users: the introduction of message editing, News About Nigeria reports.
Mark Zuckerberg, in a Facebook post, revealed that users now have the ability to modify a message within 15 minutes of sending it.
To utilize this feature, one simply needs to press and hold on a message and select the edit option to make the desired changes.
The edited message will be labeled as “edited” alongside the timestamp, indicating that it has been altered.
However, it’s important to note that WhatsApp will not retain a history of previous versions of edited messages, meaning that other users will be unable to view them.
In a blog post, the company expressed their enthusiasm for giving users greater control over their conversations by allowing them to rectify misspellings or provide additional context within a message.
To make use of this feature, users must tap and hold the message they wish to edit, and then select the “Edit” option from the menu. This option will be available for 15 minutes after sending the message.
Prior to this update, users had no choice but to delete an entire message or send a separate correction message.
In the previous year, WhatsApp extended the time limit for deleting a message from 48 hours to 60 hours.
WhatsApp’s rivals, such as Telegram and Signal, have long provided users with the ability to edit messages. Apple also introduced message editing and unsending functionality in iOS 16 for iMessage.
Additionally, Twitter introduced an edit button for its paid users last year. Although WhatsApp’s time limit for modifying a message may not be as extensive as Telegram’s 48-hour window, it is still an improvement over having no editing feature at all.
Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, has confirmed that the editing feature is currently being rolled out to users and will be made available to everyone in the coming weeks.
