It looks like WhatsApp is working on a new feature that’ll add a little bit of convenience and privacy when sending messages. According to a report by WABetaInfo, the option to send view-once text messages was spotted in the WhatsApp Beta for Android 2.22.25.20, which could mean that this feature will roll out to the rest of us in a future update.
You might be familiar with WhatsApp’s view-once feature for photos. This feature is available when you want to send images through WhatsApp by simply tapping the little “1” with a circle icon at the end of your chat input bar. This will then enable the view-once setting for that particular image that you want to send. On the recipient’s end, they will get a text box that says “photo” which they can tap on and view the image once.
With view-once on text messaging, it looks like it works in quite a similar way. There’s an icon next to the chat bar that enables this feature, which then also turns your send button into one with a tiny little lock on it to indicate that it is more “private” I guess. Then, the recipient will get a bubble that says “text” instead, which they can tap on to view. Once they’ve viewed it, the text expires.
This seems quite useful when you want to send information that is sensitive, even to people you trust. Sometimes, you’d never know what kind of environment they’re in or who is looking over their shoulder, so it’s nice to have a feature like this when you want to share that kind of info.
In the past, I did this by deleting the message “For Everyone” once my intended recipient has received the information. But, what I found out is that if you “reply” to that message, the contents of that deleted message are still visible in the replied message, forcing you to delete more than one which is a bit of a hassle. This view-once makes things a lot more convenient.
We’re not sure when or if this feature will roll out to the public, and the look and design of the feature may change as well, but I think it’s a cool new feature that I’m definitely looking forward to.
