It seems like yesterday, but it was the year 2017 when WhatsApp introduced the elimination of sent messages, so that the message was no longer visible to you and the other person. The big downside is that you had 7 minutes from when the message was sent to delete it. Later the time limit was increased to 68 minutes and 16 seconds, a figure that is still valid today.
According to WaBetaInfo, this time limit to delete your messages could disappear in the future, thus being able to delete sent messages from sender and receiver without time limit, as has happened in Telegram since 2019.
Where I said “I say” I say “This message was deleted”
Since 2017, it is possible to regret after sending a message on WhatsApp and undo it, although you have to before 4,096 seconds have passed since it was sent, or 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds. When you do this, the text “This message was deleted” is displayed in the chat for the recipient and “You deleted this message” for you.
Deletion is not infallible, as there are all kinds of methods to recover deleted messages, in addition to always being the possibility that the other person has seen it before you deleted it, although something is something. Now, WaBetaInfo has found indications that the application could remove the time limit to delete a message in a future update.
According to this post, the latest version 2.21.23.1 beta of WhatsApp for Android internally allows users to delete messages for everyone regardless of when they were shipped. As proof, in the screenshot above it can be seen that the option to delete appears for everyone in a message from several months ago.
For the moment there is nothing confirmed, and it could be an error or a reset in the maximum time allowed to delete a message. In messaging applications it is common to have a time limit, except for Telegram, which since 2019 allows you to delete messages in private chats regardless of who has written them and without a time limit. We will have to wait for future updates to check for changes.
Via | WaBetaInfo