WhatsApp Disappearing Messages Feature: Here’s How To Use It

Whatsapp is a social media app that is used by a large populace of people nowadays – both young and old. It poses as an easy platform to share media and messages from one person to another. Group chats allow you to have conversations with a maximum of 50 people in one go. In the era of the pandemic, even educational institutions use Whatsapp to create official college groups and share educational content with students. You can make Whatsapp voice calls as well as video calls. The video calls can be done with multiple people simultaneously in order to make people feel like they are sitting together as opposed to having a video call over the internet. 

Whatsapp is constantly making updates to the application, like status updates, and Whatsapp profile pictures. One of the most intriguing changes Whatsapp has made is the inclusion of the disappearing feature. Once the feature is enabled, chats will disappear after seven days of them being made. The change has been made by Whatsapp saying that they are trying to make the platform as akin to a people to people interaction as possible, and when people do not stick around after a conversation, why should the chat?

It is indeed a unique thought process, and luckily, its implementation is optional. You can choose if you want to implement the new feature as a part of your chats. If any media is shared in the chats, then these images and videos will also get deleted after 7 days. However, you can always download and save the content in your gallery, or take screenshots of media while it is still available, as most people did till now. The only difference is that this feature will be available only for a period of 7 days after the message is sent. If a Whatsapp user does not open Whatsapp for 7 days the messages will still get deleted.

However, they will be available for viewing in the notifications until Whatsapp is opened.  However, there are some loopholes that will prevent the disappearing text from disappearing, even if you have enabled the option. If you use the Reply feature and respond to a particular text using another text as a reference, then the referenced text may not disappear post-7-day automatic deletion. If you forward a disappearing message to a chat where the disappearing feature has not been enabled, then the message will not disappear. If you as the user create a backup for your Whatsapp chats, even the disappearing messages will get backed up. 

Here is how you can enable the disappearing features on your Whatsapp account –

1. Open Whatsapp 
2. Navigate to the chat where you want to commence the disappearing feature. 
3. Go to the name of the contact. 
4. Go to the Disappearing Messages option.
5. If you see a dialogue box, click on ‘Continue.’ 
6. Click on ‘On.’

Here is how you can disable the disappearing features on your Whatsapp account –

1. Open Whatsapp 
2. Navigate the chat where you want to disable the disappearing feature.
3. Go to the name of the contact.
4. Go to the Disappearing Messages option 
5. When you see the dialogue box, click on ‘Continue.’
6. Click on ‘Off’ 

The process of enabling and disabling the feature is extremely easy. It has its perks in that you will not need to continuously keep deleting data from Whatsapp if your phone is suffering from low storage capacity. This will get done for you automatically—the beauty of every new feature that Whatsapp brings out lies in the fact that they are optional. You can choose to use them or not use them, as per your liking.