Once it emerged that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had the ability to unsend messages that he sent, a feature that wasn’t available to any other user, the company confirmed that it would develop the same feature for all users in a few months. Leaks revealed that this feature was in development and now it’s finally here. The unsend feature is now rolling out for Facebook Messenger.
Starting today, Facebook Messenger users can remove their sent messages on the app, whether they’ve sent it to a person or a group. They just need to tap on the message that they want to remove and then select the option “Remove for Everyone.” The message that’s removed will be replaced by text which informs everyone in the chat that the particular message was removed.
While in Zuckerberg’s case messages that were sent months ago mysteriously disappeared from the recipients’ inboxes, the same luxury won’t be extended to everybody else. Users will only have up to ten minutes to remove a message after it is sent. There will also be a “Remove for You” option which can be used at any time to remove a message from your side of the chat, it doesn’t remove the message from the recipients’ end.
This new feature is rolling out today with the latest versions of Facebook’s iOS and Android apps.