The disappearing messages are the last new of WhatsApp

On Whatsapp it’s arrived the messages that “self-destruct” after a week, they are called disappearing messages. Here you have what they are, how to activate them and how they work. 

What the disappearing messages are

Disappearing it means that they have a short life, that they are transitory. 

On Whatsapp the messages self-destruct after seven days and they are available both on the single chats and on the group ones. By the way the function is very basic, it can be activated for the whole chat and not for the single message.

Unlike the competitor the disappearing messages of whatsapp have a long lasting, while the Telegram‘s ones can be setted to disappear even after a bunch of seconds since their reading. 

As wrote on the official blog “Our purpose is to make the conversations on Whatsapp as much liking as possible to the real ones. This means that they don’t have to be stored forever. And it is for this reason that we want to give to our users the possibility to use the disappearing messages on Whatsapp”.

How to activate the disappearing messages

The announce of the messages that self-destruct dates back to the last march, the new function was called: “self-destruction of messages”. With the official announce made at the beginning of this month the function, finally, arrived on Whatsapp, with the name “disappearing messages”.

After a first turnament of tests for the only american users now the function is ready to reach the whole world. But how can we activate it? 

Activate the new function of Whatsapp is in reality very easy: it’s enough to open the chat that we want and to click on the menu on the top on the right. Here we will find the option “show the contact” to open the contact file, where there will be even the option “activate or disable the disappearing messages”.

A similar system is the one for the group chat, where the option, though, is in the main menu under the option “Info group”. Inside the group chats only the administrator will have the possibility to activate the disappearing messages. 

Some special cases

Be carefull, though, because there are many special cases to take care about, they are detailed explained in the chat.

First of all we must say that even the multimedia contents, of a chat with the function “disappearing messages” activated, will disappear in seven days, unless you don’t have the auto saving of them on your phone. So be carefull to not lose some important picture!

There are then many doubts, for example, about the messages mentioned to answer to some of them, or about the messages forwarded to other chats, or if a contact doesn’t open whatsapp will be ever able to read the disappearing message? Here you have how the FAQ answer to these doubts:

• If a contact doesn’t open Whatsapp for seven days, the message will disappear. By the way, the preview of it might be still visile in the notifications until the opening of Whatsapp.
• When you answer to a message, it’s mentioned the intial message. If you answer to a disappearing message, the text of the message might be visible in the chat even after the seven days.
• When a disappearing message is forwarded in a chat where the disappearing messages are disabled, thes will be visible in the forwarded chat.
• If a user does a backup when the disappearing message is still visible, it will be included in the backup. The disappearing messages will be deleted when the user will does the recovery from a backup.

Disappearing messages and privacy

We must, so, take note of all the situation mentioned above and even about the fact that a disappearing message has anyway a life of seven days, which aren’t few. 

Without even take care of the fact that every multimedia element (audio, video or picture) can be saved on every smartphone. But not even the textual message can escape from a screenshot, which doesn’t matter on whatsapp even if it want to protect its users privacy.

We must, so, not consider the disappearing message as an instrument to keep somehow our privacy, with the thought that anyway all we write will soon disappear. That’s not true. 

This post is also available in: Italiano