The feeling of sending a regrettable message to anyone, regardless of medium, is mostly pretty shitty. If you’re savvy with email, you might know you can hit an unsend button to stop that shit going out, but for the most part, taking back an instant message isn’t an option. Welp, you’ll be pleased to hear that Facebook is currently testing an unsend feature for Messenger.
[jwplayer sKZZk6x3]
Twitter user @wongmjane claims to be part of that test group, posting screenshots of the feature in action, which were then published by TechCrunch. While the option to delete a message from a chat was always there, it would only ever remove it from your side of the exchange, meaning it would remain on the recipient(s)’ view regardless of your actions. Unsend, however, would remove the message altogether.
You can check out the screenshots below.
Facebook Messenger is finally working on “Unsend Message” in the app for everyone!
Tip @Techmeme pic.twitter.com/5OtQrmyID3
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 12, 2018
Handy, no? Wong says, however, that there’s a time limit for unsending messages, but has not specified what it is. Similar functions, like Gmail‘s Undo Send, gives you a 30-second window to unsend, but we’ll have to wait and see if Facebook’s timeframe is similar.
A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that “Facebook internally tests products and features before they ship to the public so we can ensure the quality of the experience”.
As always, we won’t know for sure if unsend will become a fully fledged Messenger feature, but I’d say there’s a good chance it will, we just don’t know when.
