14 DAY TRIAL // WhatsApp is by the far the number one messaging platform on iPhone and Android, but the Facebook-owned company is under pressure to further improve the service, not only because users expect new-gen functionality, but also because competitors keep adding new capabilities to their apps.
Telegram is clearly the best example in this regard, as this messaging app has many of the features that WhatsApp is still working on.
One of them is self-destructing messages, which WhatsApp is yet to release but which we do know is currently in development and should get the go-ahead at one point in the future.
Self-destructing messages are an easy way to enhance privacy and provide users with more control over the sensitive data that is shared in a conversation. On Telegram, for example, self-destructing messages can be configured in a secret chat, so all messages are automatically removed from all devices that participate in a conversation at a user-defined time.
WhatsApp is also working on bringing similar capabilities to its messaging platform, and just like on Telegram, users will be allowed to configure a timer to remove the messages.
But at the same time, WABetaInfo has discovered that WhatsApp is also developing an extension to this feature that would essentially bring us self-destructing media. So while the original feature is specifically aimed at messages, this newly-discovered option only concerns media like photos and videos.
This time, however, the approach will be different, and users won’t have to configure a timer for the whole thing.
Instead, how self-destructing media is going to work in WhatsApp is much simpler. When you receive such a photo or video, the media disappears immediately after viewing it or when leaving the conversation. There’s no message that shows up instead of the deleted media, so you might not even notice that something was there.
On Telegram, both messages and media are treated pretty much the same. In other words, they are both controlled by the user-defined timer, so you can access a specific photo or video for as long as the timer allows you to. If the conversation is configured to auto-delete messages after one minute, you can view a photo or video for a maximum of one minute after receiving it, after which it’s automatically deleted.
On WhatsApp, things will be a little different, so you are allowed to view the media just once. However, it’s not known at this point how long the photos and videos will stay in the conversation screen if the users don’t tap or switch to a different screen or application.
The expiring media can only include images, videos, and GIFs, according to this latest discovery. The feature was noticed in a beta build of WhatsApp for Android, and needless to say, there’s no ETA as to when it could get the go-ahead for all users who aren’t part of the beta program.
What we still don’t know is whether WhatsApp will allow users to take a screenshot of the expiring media. On Telegram, whenever you attempt to take a screenshot of a photo or video sent in a secret chat, the other participants are notified or the screenshot is blocked. WhatsApp is yet to introduce such a feature, but a screenshot notification sent in the chat would pretty much make sense.
The new feature will obviously be available on both Android and iPhone, and the expiring media will come with a special flag to set it apart from the normal media shared in a conversation.
The Facebook-owned company has so far remained completely tight-lipped on the addition of this feature.