WhatsApp’s secret new feature will delete texts once you’ve read them — and it could be coming to iOS and Android soon
WhatsApp is testing a new feature that will allow messages to be deleted after they have been read. This feature aims to enhance user privacy by providing more control over message retention. Currently being tested on both iOS and Android, it could be released soon.
- ▪WhatsApp is working on a disappearing messages feature that deletes texts after they have been read.
- ▪The feature offers options for how long to wait before deleting the message after it has been read.
- ▪This update expands the existing disappearing messages functionality, which previously only allowed messages to vanish after a set time.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | TechRadar |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techradar.com/phones/whatsapps-secret-new-feature-will-delete-texts-once-youve-read-them-and-it-could-be-coming-to-ios-and-android-soon |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 12:02:04 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T12:05:02.589Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T12:05:10.756Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 6abQrZG4qh41 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Phones WhatsApp’s secret new feature will delete texts once you’ve read them — and it could be coming to iOS and Android soon News By Alex Blake published 20 May 2026 Burn after reading When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Soon you'll have more privacy options with your texts. (Image credit: Shutterstock) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter WhatsApp is testing a new disappearing messages featureIt may delete texts after they’ve been read, not just after a set timerThe feature is being tested on both iOS and AndroidIf you want to be able to send a WhatsApp…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechRadar.
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