Telegram is generally regarded as a more feature-packed messaging app than WhatsApp. For instance, it first allowed you to edit your recent messages way back in 2016. But WhatsApp is catching up pretty quickly. In the latest move, WhatsApp is adding a way to edit typos in your messages to the latest beta app, but there are a few caveats.
Earlier this week, WhatsApp rolled out the edit button with WhatsApp Web’s latest beta release. And now it's the beta Android app's turn, according to WABetaInfo. With the new edit option, you can clean up your recent message to fix any typos or add more context for the receiver. To modify your texts, long-press the message and then tap on the vertical ellipses at the top. You will see the new edit button in the overflow menu. Everyone in the chat will then see an "edited" badge next to the message to indicate the sender made some changes after sending the text.
However, you will have to act quickly if you want to edit a message. That’s because you only get 15 minutes to fix something, though you can edit the message as many times as you need until the timer is up. Furthermore, you won’t be able to edit messages sent from other devices, like when you’re using WhatsApp Companion mode to use your account on two phones.
While this time limit is crucial for making sure people aren’t dubiously editing weeks- or even months-old messages, WhatsApp could take a page out of Telegram’s book and offer at least a day or two to make the changes. In fact, WhatsApp allowed a similar 15-minute timeframe when it first introduced the option to delete your messages for everyone, which has since been raised to two days. Hopefully, WhatsApp will follow its own example down the line.
You can test out the feature with WhatsApp beta v2.23.10.13 for Android. If you’re officially enrolled in WhatsApp’s beta program, you can pull the update from the Play Store — if not, you can download the latest beta version from APK Mirror. If you want to stick with your current stable release, you will likely have to wait for a few weeks before the editing feature reaches everyone.