At the end of 2020, WhatsApp introduced a way to create conversations that disappear over time. This feature, called “temporary messages” allows you to send messages that disappear after a few days, leaving no trace, either for privacy reasons or for not accumulating conversations in the messaging app (many of us tend to “collect” chats).
In addition to text messages, the multimedia files that we send, such as photos and videos, will also disappear if they are configured as temporary messages, leaving no trace on users’ devices.
But those who have used this useful feature will surely have wanted to keep a specific message from the conversation, such as a photo of a child, an address or a phone number. Now, WhatsApp has announced the release of an update that will allow users to save certain messages (i.e. prevent them from disappearing) in temporary message conversations.
This new feature, which will be launched in the coming weeks, will allow the recipient of a temporary message to keep a message by simply long-pressing on it and selecting the option to keep the message. But whether a message can be kept is not in the recipient’s hand, but in the sender’s.
WhatsApp describes this new feature as “Keep in chat: the sender’s new superpower“, and gives the sender of the message the ability to allow whether or not the message can be kept. When the recipient of the message clicks on the option to keep it, the sender will be prompted with a notification where they can accept or decline the request.
This way, even if a recipient wants to keep a message, the sender has the final say: “if you decide that no one can keep your message, this decision is final, so no one else can keep it, and the message will be deleted when the timer expires”.
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