For smartphone users with fumble fingers or anyone who sent an embarrassing misspelling or autocorrect, help is finally at hand.
WhatsApp allows users to do just that for up to 15 minutes after sending a message. In addition, the popular chat app announced in a blog post Monday that users can correct misspellings, add more details, or otherwise change what they have sent to friends, family and co-workers.
“For the moments when you make a mistake or simply change your mind, you can now edit your sent messages on WhatsApp,” the app said in a Monday blog post.
The ability to edit messages has started rolling out to people worldwide. It will be available to all users in the coming weeks, according to the company owned by Facebook parent Meta.
To fix a text, press and hold the sent message and pick “edit.” After the changes, it will display “edited,” but WhatsApp says those receiving the message won’t be able to see the edit history.
As Twitter did with its Blue subscription-only function, the edited texts will have a notification saying that the message was edited. Unlike Twitter, though, there will be no way to see the previous versions of an edited message.
The feature will only be valid for 15 minutes after sending a message – unlike Twitter, which allows its Blue subscribers a half-hour to edit tweets. After that, there will be no way to revise the message, but it can still be deleted with a “This message has been deleted” notification in its place.
As of writing, the feature does not seem to be available in Türkiye yet, at least for some smartphones.
Last year, Apple revealed the ability to edit and unsend messages between iPhones in a system upgrade. The company said those on the receiving end see that a message was unsent and the edit history.
