Not that long ago, sending a message was final. It didn’t matter if you had an embarrassing typo, or you sent a message to the wrong person: Once you tapped that “send” button, you were locked in, and whoever that message was sent to would have it as long as they wanted.
These days, however, we have the technology to save ourselves from such embarrassment. Many chat apps now have options to retrieve a message after it was sent, whether by editing the message to fix a mistake, or the ability to delete a message from everyone in the chat. It doesn’t guarantee that the people who received the message didn’t see it, but it does remove that message from view. If they didn’t catch it, they never will.
Plenty of chat apps have this delete option today, from WhatsApp to iMessage. But one notable exception has been Google Messages. If you send a message you didn’t mean to send, you can edit it for up to 15 minutes, but you can’t undo it. Luckily, that’s beginning to change. 9to5Google originally spotted the ability to delete messages from everyone back in February. Now, as Android Authority notes, it appears to be rolling out to all Google Messages users.
To get specific, RCS, the messaging protocol that Google Messages now defaults to, has had this option since last July’s “Universal Profile 2.7” update, which allowed users to “Edit, Recall and Delete [messages] that they sent earlier for themselves and the message recipient.” However, it’s only been since February that Google has been working on the feature within the app.
How “Delete for everyone” works in Google Messages
When the feature hits your Google Messages app, you’ll now have two options when you delete a message. You’ll have the “Delete for me” option, which behaves the same as deleting a message always has: it’ll delete on your end, but not for anyone else. However, there’s also now “Delete for everyone,” which will delete the message for all users running a compatible version of Google Messages.
What do you think so far?
That’s the key here. While the message will be removed from users who have an updated, compatible version of Google Messages, it won’t be deleted from older app versions. It’s the Achilles’ heel of the feature, and it applies to most chat apps that offer it: You’ll never really know whether the message was deleted, unless you’re certain all parties involved are running an up-to-date version of Google Messages.
Still, eventually, most active Google Messages users will be running a version of the app with the feature. Sometime soon, you’ll be able to rest easy, knowing that a mistaken message is not the end of the world—so long as you delete it in time.
