WhatsApp has announced its plans to introduce a new feature, allowing users to edit their messages within a 15-minute window, a feature that rivals Telegram and Discord already provide.
The company stated that users could modify their messages for up to 15 minutes after they’ve been sent.
WhatsApp, an instant messaging application, is a subsidiary of Meta, the American tech giant that also owns Facebook and Instagram.
The new editing feature will be made accessible to WhatsApp’s 2 billion users in the forthcoming weeks. India remains the largest market for WhatsApp, with about 487 million users.
“Whether you’re correcting a minor typo or adding additional context to a message, we’re thrilled to give you more control over your conversations,” WhatsApp said in a Monday blog post.
To utilize this feature, users must long-press on the message they’ve sent and select ‘Edit’ from the drop-down menu for up to 15 minutes post-sending.
All edited messages will bear an ‘edited’ tag to inform recipients that the original content has been altered. However, the application will not display the evolution of the message’s modifications.
This announcement from WhatsApp comes on the heels of similar feature introductions by Telegram and Signal. Facebook introduced the edit functionality nearly a decade ago, which was a pioneering move at the time.
Around the same time, Facebook stated that more than half of its users were accessing the site via mobile devices, which are more susceptible to typographical errors. Any edited updates are marked as such on Facebook, with an edit history visible to users.
Last year, Twitter, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, announced its decision to permit paying subscribers to edit their tweets. Users can make a few alterations to their tweets within 30 minutes of posting.
In a previous blog post, Twitter mentioned, “We aim to make tweeting more friendly and less daunting. We believe that you should be able to engage in conversations in a manner that suits you, and we’re continuously striving to make that process as seamless as possible.”
