Ever wished you could “unsend” a message right after you sent it? A new feature on Facebook Messenger will allow you to do just that

We have all done it at least once. We send a message that we wished we hadn’t and wished that it didn’t happen at all. If you use Facebook Messenger a lot, you’ll be happy to know that a new feature will allow you to unsend messages before your intended recipient can read them.  

Facebook will soon roll out a brand new feature that allows its users to recall a message up to 10 minutes after it was sent before the intended recipient can read it. The feature will make the recalled messages disappear completely from the conversation thread.

Digital Media Consultant, Matt Navarra discovered the upcoming feature listed under coming soon in the release notes of Facebook Messenger version 191.0 for iOS. This very likely means that iOS users will be the first to get this feature.

There’s no indication if the update will also be rolled out to Android users but there’s no reason to expect that it shouldn’t be, it’s just a matter of time. 

For now, when a Facebook Messenger user deletes a message that they’ve sent, it will disappear from their view but the message will still be readable in the recipient’s view.

In comparison, Facebook-owned Whatsapp first introduced the ability for users to recall messages in October 2017, provided that the recall is done within 420 seconds (or 7 minutes) after the message was sent. That time frame has since been extended to over an hour. On Facebook Messenger — when the feature is made available — you will only have only 10 minutes to redact your compromising message from its unintended recipient.