WhatsApp extends message deletion timeframe to over an hour

Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service is considered by many metrics to be the most popular messaging platform in the world (see this SimilarWeb report on the matter). However, there has been one specific feature where the platform has lagged behind its competitors: the ability to delete messages sent by mistake.

Originally, when WhatsApp introduced the ability to delete sent messages in October of 2017, the time limit was a rather strict seven minutes. The latest update to WhatsApp, however, quietly raised this limit to 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds exactly. This gives users of the messaging application much more time to identify and erase mistakenly sent messages.

As WhatsApp does not have "secret" conversation functionality like other dedicated messaging applications (such as Signal and Telegram), this increase in the time allowed for deleting messages could go a long way towards helping loyal users of WhatsApp have more temporary or private conversations.

As of the time of this writing, WhatsApp has not provided any additional information reflecting this updated time limit on its support page for the feature. This was originally discovered by WABetaInfo on Twitter.