Technology is made for humans and humans make mistakes. In the case for messaging apps, sometimes you may end up sending a message to a person who is not the intended recipient, which could lead to an awkward conversation later on.
A solution to this problem is having the ability to recall a message that you send to the wrong recipient to save face or an explanation. WhatsApp has a solution to this and it is called Recall, which was previously known as unsend but it is not live yet.
According to WABetaInfo, on the Android app (version 2.17.235), they were able to use the Recall feature. The feature is disabled by default by now which means we will have to wait for a server side update later on when they are done testing it on the beta channel.
In preparation to an eventual roll-out of the Recall feature, WhatsApp published a FAQ article detailing the yet-to-be-released feature which divulges interesting features about it.
- You can only recall a message for upto 5 minutes after sending and once the five minutes are over you will not be able to recall a message. This is way shorter than what Telegram Messenger offers, where you can delete a message sent to the wrong recipient within 48 hours.
- Both you and your recipient must be using the latest version of WhatsApp for Android, iPhone or Windows Phone.
- Recipients might see the message before you recall them or if the recall is not successful, so do it fast.
- WhatsApp will notify you if a recall was not successful.
- If the sender queries for a recall, you as the recipient will be notified with a “This message was recalled” message.
WhatsApp also gave instructions to how you should perform the recall. On Android, tap and hold the message, tap the menu button and hit recall. On iPhone and Windows Phone, just tap and hold the message to highlight it then tap recall.
