It seems the main messaging and social media apps are afraid of editing messages that have already been sent. There’s Twitter (or rather, X), which until quite recently didn’t dare to include such a long-awaited feature —albeit exclusive to subscribers— or WhatsApp, which after so much time has finally launched the option to edit messages.
That’s right, those of us who care about writing reasonably well in an instant messaging app can finally afford to fix those typical mistakes made when typing quickly, or rephrase sentences to make them clearer, or add more information we forgot to include originally.
A basic tool that only took ten years to arrive
Although WhatsApp was officially launched in 2009, it wasn’t until 2012 that it blew up. Since then, more than ten years have passed; imagine how many spelling mistakes you must have sent during your time with the app.
Well, from now on that’s a thing of the past, because if you make an error of that kind you can rewrite it immediately. More specifically, within the 15 minutes after sending the message, since after that time you will no longer be able to modify the text.
To do this, the steps to follow are very simple. Let’s see it in a practical case:
Oh my goodness! How unbecoming of me to make such a severe mistake! What image will my interlocutor have of me?
Well, let’s calm down a lot, because now if we press and hold the message, an option called Edit appears that allows us to redeem ourselves.
And there it is, the text box to modify the message however we want appears again. It doesn’t matter if you change one letter or the whole text—just do what you need to do and tap the ☑ icon to save the changes.
Now then, your mistake won’t be free of cost. The evidence of the offense will be recorded in the message bubble with the label Edited so your interlocutor knows you’ve dared to edit your sent WhatsApp. However, breathe easy because they won’t be able to see the change history; that is, they won’t be able to check what it said before—unless they had already read your message, either in the app itself or in the notification.
Editing WhatsApp is going to become my passion
If I don’t use Twitter so regularly it’s because I can’t edit messages [for free] and that puts me off. It’s true that on WhatsApp we relax a lot because, after all, it’s an instant messaging app.
But being able to edit WhatsApp messages gives you the peace of mind to correct spelling or grammar mistakes, clarify or improve wording (without having to send another message), add additional information, and especially, remove incorrect information to avoid misunderstandings.
What do you think of editing WhatsApp messages? Will you use it or let the reader deal with the messages? Remember that at the time of writing these lines, you only have 15 minutes to modify your message from when you send it.
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