We’ve been (not so) patiently waiting since 2017
WhatsApp may be one of the most popular encrypted messaging apps around, but it isn’t exactly ahead of the curve when it comes to the latest features. WhatsApp is frequently catching up to the likes of Telegram with support for stuff like proper, full-featured polls. Recently, we’ve checked out Meta’s plans to finally implement something similar to Twitter’s message editing. Now there’s reason to believe this feature could be available to beta testers on Android soon.
Who doesn’t mess up a text from time to time and feels compelled to follow up with the asterisk of an embarrassed correction? Or maybe you just delete messages for everyone and type it all out again. Reports of WhatsApp’s plans for a message editing feature first showed up all the way back in 2017, but the most recent development came in October last year when WABetaInfo spotted an “edited” badge appearing for reworked messages. WABetaInfo recently shared a new pop-up confirming who can see edited messages.
The pop-up seen on the Android app when editing messages from the web interface
Since message editing is available for beta testers using WhatsApp Web, it is also available on their connected phones, revealing in bits and pieces how the Android implementation could work. According to the pop-up, people using the latest version of WhatsApp should be able to see the edited message after the feature rolls out. This doesn’t mean anyone on an older version will still have access to the unedited version of the message, because WhatsApp will implement this only when older, incompatible versions are made redundant.
Previous reports suggested senders would have up to 15 minutes to edit text in their messages. However, our understanding of the finer workings of the feature still has several gaping holes, like the uncertainty around whether senders can edit messages only once, or as many times as they please before the time window closes. We might just need to wait for an Android beta for all our answers.
For now, there’s no official timeline for when Android beta testers can get started retooling their words on WhatsApp. WABetaInfo suggests that could be just a few days away, but time will tell if that’s true.
