Whatsapp’s ‘Delete for Everyone’ Might Not Work, Know Why?

Whatsapp processes 50 Billion Messages in a day and with such a huge user base, it needs to come up with new and exciting features every now and then. And one of the top qualities in the app is the “Delete For Everyone” feature which might not work. This feature allows you to take down your message before the receiver gets to read it.

Whatsapp allows the user to delete the message within an hour. Messages which have been already sent back more than an hour ago cannot be deleted. You can delete it from your chat but the person you sent it to will be able to see it anyhow like they were supposed to.

Recently, Whatsapp released an update for the application and this time their latest update comes with some loopholes. The ‘Delete For Everyone’s Feature is one thing that has been tweaked and can cause a little problem for some out there, want to know how? Well, keep on reading.

Also Read:Whatsapp Ready to Roll Out Dark Mode and New Features in Coming Updates.

WhatsApp’s latest update lets you use the feature of ‘Delete For Everyone’ only if both the parties have the latest version installed. Yes, you heard it right. If either the sender or the receiver has an older version, the ‘Delete For Everyone’ feature will fail to work. This feature is present for both Android and iOS devices and updates your WhatsApp before you’re tricked into not being able to delete something that you should’ve not sent. 




If you send pictures, audio or videos to an iOS user using Whatsapp and use the feature to delete it, it won’t delete the media. Unlike Android, Deleting messages for an iOS user never delete the media sent from their Photos application. The reason is the tight upholding of Apple’s privacy policy. Apple does not allow access to Device’s Gallery from third-party applications. This is why Apple devices are referred to be the most secure of them all, but in this case, it creates a bug.




Also, Whatsapp has made some changes in its notification setting this year. If you have tried to delete a message for everyone but somehow it fails to go through and is interrupted in between, Whatsapp will not notify you. And while you’ll be getting a deleted message on your side, there are high chances that the same message would be present on the other end instead of getting removed.

This basically means that you’d not be notified sometimes when your message fails to be deleted and could end up in a bad place while deleting the message while having poor network coverage or something else which is causing the problem.




Whatsapp allows every user to exercise this feature for only a short period. If you wish to delete your message, you are allowed to do so within one hour after sending it. Before this, it was set at 7 minutes, which was seemingly short for even realizing that you’ve made a mistake sometimes. But it has been revised to one hour limit later on.

Also, sometimes by chance encounter, the recipients can see your message by opening your chat head or by peeking at the notification shade in their devices. Whenever you would send a message and would want it to get it off before it gets read by someone, there is a high chance that they’ve already read it from the source like this. 

Also, there are apps that capture text or other messages from notification shade and save it for viewing, even if you delete the message. So, using ‘Delete for Everyone’ may not be the ultimate solution.