Not too long ago, once you sent a message, it was final. Typos or mistaken recipients meant those messages stayed with the recipient as long as they wanted. Today, technology allows us to avoid such embarrassment. Many chat apps now let you edit or delete messages after sending. While this doesn’t ensure recipients haven’t viewed the message, it does remove the message from sight. Apps like WhatsApp and iMessage offer delete options, but Google Messages has lagged. You could edit a message for 15 minutes but not undo it. That’s changing, as reported by 9to5Google in February and noted by Android Authority, it’s being rolled out to all Google Messages users.
Specifically, since last July’s “Universal Profile 2.7” update in RCS, users could “Edit, Recall and Delete” messages sent to themselves and recipients. Google has only started implementing this in the app since February.
When this feature arrives in your Google Messages app, you’ll have two options for deleting a message. “Delete for me” removes it from your view alone, while “Delete for everyone” removes it from all users with a compatible app version.
However, this feature’s limitation is that it won’t delete a message from older app versions, common with many chat apps. Therefore, you won’t truly know if a message was deleted unless all parties have the updated app. Eventually, most active users will have the updated app. Soon, you’ll have the reassurance that sent mistakes can be deleted in time, preventing further worry.