Today is a good day for people who have a habit of accidentally hitting “send.” Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular social apps on the planet, but until today it never allowed you to remove a message in a way that prevented the other person or persons in the conversation from seeing it.
Now, after hinting that such a feature was in the works, Facebook is finally rolling out the message delete feature to Facebook Messenger for everyone, but it’s not quite as powerful as you might be thinking. Here’s how it works:
- The feature works pretty much the same way whether you’re using Messenger in a web browser or a mobile device, just substitute clicks for taps.
- First, to delete a message you have to click the little “…” icon next to it and then click “Remove.”
- Now you’ll be given two options. “Remove for Everyone” and “Remove for You.”
- If you click “Remove for You” the message will disappear on your screen but everyone else will still be able to see it. If you choose “Remove for Everyone” the message will disappear for you as well as anyone you’re chatting with in the same conversation.
BUT — and this is a big but —you can’t just delete messages whenever you want. If you want to use the “Remove for Everyone” option you have to do it within 10 minutes of sending it. That’s more than enough time to realize you typed something incorrectly, but it won’t let you take back a rant that you posted the night before.
You can still use the “Remove for You” option any time you want, but that will only scrub the message from your screen.
It’s definitely a nice addition and a useful feature for just about everyone, but it seems a bit odd not to just allow everyone to delete messages whenever they want, doesn’t it?