WhatsApp might soon become a lot safer when it comes to exchanging risqué pics and videos. Well, sort of.
The Facebook-owned app appears to be working on a new feature that will make it possible to send messages with expiring media, serial WhatsApp leaker WABetaInfo has noticed.
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While users won’t be able to set an expiration timer for media, photos and videos will automatically disappear from the recipient’s logs once they’ve opened the file and left the chat. Curiously, WABetaInfo notes expiring media doesn’t even leave a “This media has expired” notice once the file has been viewed — instead, it simply vanishes.
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Here’s what it’ll look like:
It’s probably on your mind, so let’s talk about it: for now, it remains unclear if WhatsApp will notify senders if a recipient has screenshot their expiring media (sort of like Instagram used to do); if that turns out to be the case, this is certainly something the company should warn users about before rolling out the feature to the masses.
The option to send expiring media will supplement another much anticipated feature WhatsApp has recently been toying with, namely expiring messages. While expiring messages also made it possible to send media files that will disappear after a set amount of time, some files could still be saved prior to deletion. Hopefully, that won’t be the case with this new feature.
Expiring media has appeared in the latest WhatsApp beta version submitted to Google Play, but there’s no telling when or if it’ll make its way to the official app. We’ll keep you posted once it comes out, though.
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