WhatsApp allows 15-minute edits

Today, WhatsApp announced message editing, a long-awaited feature.

Mark Zuckerberg announced on Facebook that users can now edit messages within 15 minutes. Press and hold a message and tap “edit” to change it. Edited messages will be marked “edited” next to the time stamp. The app won’t save corrections. Edited messages are hidden from other users.

“We’re excited that you’ll now have more control over your chats, like correcting misspellings or adding context. In a blog post, the company explained that you must tap and hold the message for 15 minutes and then select “Edit” from the menu.

Users previously had to delete or resend a message. The chat app increased the message deletion limit from 48 hours to 60 hours last year.

Telegram and Signal have long allowed message editing, unlike WhatsApp. Apple added iMessage editing and unsending in iOS 16. Twitter gave paid users the edit button last year. It’s better than Telegram’s 48-hour message modification window.

The editing feature lets me fix typos without sending another message. Corrections confuse recipients. It also spams. Deleted messages remain in the conversation, which is confusing. Instead, “This message was deleted” appears in gray.

Meta said the feature is rolling out now and will be available to everyone in a few weeks.