WhatsApp added support for disappearing messages in November 2020. While the platform already has end-to-end encryption, disappearing messages add another layer of safety and security as they self-destruct after a set time. Since introducing this feature, the Meta-owned service has even gone on to add support for view-once media on its platform. WhatsApp is now seemingly working on upgrading the experience of disappearing messages by introducing additional time duration options.
You can currently set your WhatsApp chats to disappear after 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days. WABetaInfo reports that WhatsApp is working on adding even more granular control over the time of self-destructing messages. It seemingly intends to add 15 new duration options, including as short as 1 hour and as long as 1 year. All the potential new time duration options that could be available for disappearing messages on WhatsApp are as follows:
- 1 hour
- 3 hours
- 6 hours
- 12 hours
- 2 days
- 3 days
- 4 days
- 5 days
- 6 days
- 14 days
- 21 days
- 30 days
- 60 days
- 180 days
- 1 year
It does not look like WhatsApp will provide a custom timer for self-destructing messages, but the above options should still be good enough for the majority of the cases. The one-hour duration will be helpful when sharing extremely sensitive and private content that you don't want to remain on the recipient's device for long.
Like with the plethora of other features that WhatsApp is testing, there's no telling when the new granular time duration options for disappearing messages will roll out to the public. Given WhatsApp's track record, you could be looking at a wait of a few weeks or several months. Nonetheless, the feature should first appear on the beta channel before making its way to the stable channel.