WhatsApp: editing messages, a dream come true! But you’ll have to be quick…

It’s official, WhatsApp officially allows you to edit the content of a message without having to delete it and resend a new one.

This is excellent news for those in a hurry who don’t take the time to reread each other, but it would be better not to nitpick too much because beyond a quarter of an hour, it will be necessary to reuse the more “traditional” methods.

15 minutes flat, not a second more!

As the now famous Commissioner Gilbert would say in the saga Taxi“ General alert “, because no, you are not dreaming, it will now be possible to modify the messages that you send to your contacts on the instant messaging of Meta, WhatsApp. We announced it to you last week at Clubic, and now the news is official. This Monday, May 22, 2023, WhatsApp concretely announces, in a short blog post, that users of its service will now be able to benefit from this innovation on all platforms. Its deployment will be gradual across the entire planet in the weeks to come.

And here is a long-requested innovation that is sure to be emulated. To edit a message, just long press (or click) on it, and select “edit”.

For the details, it is however necessary to take into account an essential fact which is that the modification of the messages can only intervene within 15 minutes following the sending of the content concerned. So while there isn’t a need for a near-instantaneous reaction to change a spelling mistake or, as WhatsApp uses on its blog for example, to correct a birthday date error, it’s not no longer possible to return to a message beyond 15 minutes after it has been sent.

Potential enthusiasts editing one of their posts several weeks later will have to deal with current features, such as deleting affected content. For example, if you incorrectly indicated the time of an appointment to one of your loved ones and the latter reproaches you for it, you will not be able to hide the proof of your error a week later!

WhatsApp more popular than ever

This new feature and its deployment come in a context where WhatsApp gives more tools to its users to (re) take control of the content of their discussions. This translates in particular into more cybersecurity and, more precisely, cyberconfidentiality via the “chat lock”.

Part of Meta, the parent company of many social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp is used by nearly a third of humans since more than 2 billion downloads of instant messaging have been recorded since its launch. In France, WhatsApp is the most downloaded application in 2022.

Source : whatsapp blog