Sent an embarrassing message in Facebook Messenger? No problem! From now on you can retract messages so that the other person doesn’t know what you said. You have to be quick. This is how it works.
Retract Facebook Messenger messages
Facebook has finally delivered on its promise. From now on it is possible to revoke messages sent in Messenger. It was always possible to delete messages for yourself, but now your conversation partners cannot see what you have said.
This is how you withdraw sent messages:
- Work Facebook Messenger to the latest version;
- Open a chat and type your message;
- Keep the text bubble pressed until the menu appears;
- Choose ‘Remove for everyone’ and confirm your choice;
- The receiving end does not know what you said now.
The new function is useful, for example, when your message is addressed to the wrong person, contains many spelling errors or because your wording could be better. However, you have to be quick. After ten minutes, your sent message is final: you can no longer delete it and the content is visible to everyone.
Keep an eye on. If you delete a message, your conversation partner will receive a notification. He or she cannot see what you have said, but may become curious. Facebook employees can always retrieve the content.
Facebook keeps its promise
The social medium announced the ‘unsent’ feature back in the summer of 2018, after Messenger users frequently asked for it. The company was discredited when it turned out that final boss Mark Zuckerberg could undo messages, and ‘normal’ users could not.
For example, some messages from the director had suddenly disappeared from chats, without the recipients having done so. When inquiring from TechCrunch it turned out that Zuckerberg was the only one to have this feature, but that it would soon be rolled out to all users. Ultimately, this took six months.