WhatsApp now offers message editing with a 15-minute time limit

Message editing is one of the most anticipated features that WhatsApp has finally revealed today.

In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that users can now modify a message within 15 minutes of sending it. You can change a message by pressing and holding the message and tapping the edit option. The altered messages will have an “edited” tag close to the time stamp to check the change. However, there will be no correction history saved by the app. The previous versions of edited messages won’t be visible to other users.

“We’re excited that you’ll now have more control over your chats, such as correcting misspellings or adding more context to a message. For this, within 15 minutes of sending the message, you have to tap and hold that message for a while and then select the option of ‘Edit’ from the menu,” the company said in a blog post.

Up to this point, clients needed to either erase a message out and out or send a remedy in a different message. The chat app increased the amount of time required to delete a message from two days (48 hours) to sixty hours last year.

The ability to edit messages has been available for a long time on WhatsApp’s rivals Telegram and Signal. Additionally, with iOS 16, Apple made it possible to edit and delete iMessage messages. The edit button was even made available to paid users on Twitter last year. While as far as possible to change a message isn’t so liberal as Wire’s 48-hour window, it is still better than a kick in the pants than nothing.

I’ve made a lot of typos in messages, but using the editing feature will allow me to quickly fix them without having to send another message. Sending remedies can confound the beneficiary. Additionally, it generates unneeded notifications. A message that you delete doesn’t completely disappear from the conversation, which can be confusing as well. A grayed-out note stating “This message was deleted” takes its place instead.

According to Meta, the feature is currently being rolled out to users and will be accessible to all in a few weeks.