WhatsApp now lets you delete a message for up to two days and 12 hours (60 hours in total), so you can delete an accidentally sent chat even after hours. Previously, this limit was 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds – yes, seconds were involved.
The company’s tweet about this feature just mentioned “just over two days,” but didn’t specify the 12-hour portion.
WhatsApp first introduced the unsend feature in 2017 with a time limit of just seven minutes, but later increased it to an hour and eight minutes. Last year, WABetaInfo noted that the company might consider introducing a seven-day limit, but with this new update, it has chosen a rather odd timeframe of two and a half days.
In comparison, the rival chat app Telegram has no limit on how to delete a message, so you can delete a chat years after you send it. Apple is going the other way; After introducing the unsend feature for iOS 16 at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, the company lowered the limit from 15 minutes to two minutes in the fourth version of the iOS 16 developer beta last month.
WhatsApp is also introducing new privacy features to its app, including blocking screenshots for “one-time messages” and the ability to leave a group silently.