Skip to main content

Facebook Messenger will soon let you delete sent messages

Ever sent something you wished you hadn’t on Facebook Messenger? Whether it’s an embarrassing message or an even more embarrassing photo, you’ll soon have up to 10 minutes in which to erase it from the internet forever.

While it’s true that you can already delete messages from Messenger, they only disappear from your own device and not from those who receive it.

Recommended Videos

The update that will allow you to remove a message from your Messenger chats is “coming soon,” Facebook said this week.

Confirmation of the upcoming feature is contained in the release notes accompanying the latest update for Facebook’s stand-alone messaging app. The final paragraph reads: “Coming soon: Remove a message from a chat thread after it’s been sent. If you accidentally send the wrong photo, incorrect information or message the wrong thread, you can easily correct it by removing the message within ten minutes of sending it.”

Facebook’s other messaging app, WhatsApp, gives you a whole hour to decide if you want to take back a message, so it’s a little surprising that you’ll only have 10 minutes to make a decision with Messenger. Interestingly, when WhatsApp rolled out the feature in 2017, you had a mere 7 minutes to delete it, but the company extended the timeframe to an hour earlier this year.

The feature has actually been available on the Messenger platform for some time, but only for Facebook’s top dogs. The fact came to light in April when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was found to be using it. The company never made it public that it was able to remove sent messages, nor did it inform recipients when it did so, leaving the company open to accusations of breaching user trust. A short while later, Facebook announced plans to launch the functionality for all users of the messaging app.

But take note. The feature does not delay the sending of the message by 10 minutes (which would make for some awkward exchanges in real-time chats), so the recipient has that amount of time to read it, and, if they like, save its contents — in other words, any potential damage could still be done.

On WhatsApp, retracted messages are replaced with a note that says “This message was deleted,” though it’s not yet clear if this will happen in Messenger chats as well.

Facebook recently unveiled a new look for Messenger that also comes with a bunch of new features for the messaging app.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
WhatsApp for iPhone may soon let users have multiple accounts on one device
WhatsApp logo on a phone.

If you use the popular messaging app WhatsApp on an iPhone, there may be times when you wish you had the ability to add more than one account. The good news is that a recent update for WhatsApp, released via Apple’s TestFlight beta program, includes the feature, suggesting that it could be rolled out soon for everyone using WhatsApp on an iPhone.

Android users will be scoffing at this news, as the feature has been available for WhatsApp on that platform since 2023. But hey, better late than never.

Read more
Samsung will soon let you rent its phones instead of buying them
A person holding the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Looking to buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 but don't have the money to pay for it all upfront? Samsung may eventually allow you to rent out the upcoming model and other Samsung Galaxy phones instead of purchasing them right off the bat.

Rumors of the smartphone subscription service came out of CES 2025, where Samsung CEO and Vice Chairman Han Jong-hee said that the company plans to introduce the subscription service at this year's Galaxy Unpacked event in two weeks, according to a report by ETNews. Jong-hee said that the service, dubbed the "AI Subscription Club," will launch in February, two months after it began offering it to customers in South Korea.

Read more
Here’s every carrier that lets your iPhone send RCS messages to Android phones
A person holding the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max.

RCS messaging has gained popularity by leaps and bounds this past year, especially in the Western market. More than 1 billion people are estimated to use RCS messaging at present, and a huge part of that growth is due to Apple introducing RCS compatibility with the arrival of iOS 18.

While iOS 18 has supported RCS messaging with Android phones since it launched in September, carrier support was a bit scarce upon launch. Now, Apple has updated its support page with an expanded list of carriers that support RCS.

Read more