WhatsApp, the popular online messaging application, is adding another new feature in its latest beta. The Facebook owned service was previously rumored to have been testing a sort of “disappearing messages” but what it actually did was unknown up until now.
[27/12, 17:11] Rahul: The new expiring messages features will be added to its latest beta build. For those unaware, a beta build is basically an early version of apps that carry new features that need to be tested before being available globally in the form of live builds. The latest version 2.19.275 of WhatsApp Beta, for Android, carries the upcoming feature for group chats.
It has been dubbed as “Delete messages” and allows the user to chose when their texts expire or disappear after a predetermined amount of time. This could be anywhere between an hour, a day, a week, a month or even a year. According to a report, the upcoming feature is being implemented to keep group chats’ conversations from taking up too much storage on smartphones Currently, a single WhatsApp group can have up to 256 different participants. Thus, the feature might turn out to be quite useful in the long run; though, there are also many different reasons for users to utilize this feature. The “Delete messages” feature is exclusively for a group chat, for now, and can only be accessed or set by the group chat’s administrators. So, a setting once applied will affect every member of the said group chat.