Facebook Messenger 'Unsend Message' Button Spotted

Facebook](https://www.gadgets360.com/tags/facebook) faced a lot of backlash back in April this year, after it confirmed that it had deleted CEO Mark Zuckerberg's messages from several recipients' inboxes on Messenger. In retaliation, the company said that it is looking to roll out an 'Unsend Message' feature that will allow all users to recall their sent messages. Finally, six months after the announcement, screenshots of the 'Unsend Message' feature in testing have been leaked, giving us hope that the social giant hasn't forgotten about its promise.

Tipster Jane Manchun Wong has shared screenshots of the 'Unsend Message' button prototype, sourced from Facebook Messenger's Android code. It's unclear when the company started testing the feature, and there is no word on when it will launch either. The current state of the feature is very buggy, with the button deleting the message only from the user's Inbox and not at the recipient's end. Indeed, it's possible that the code has shipped but isn't being actively used as part of a test.

Facebook remained extremely vague when asked about the Unsend feature's launch timeline, but confirmed its arrival sometime in the future. "Though we have nothing to announce today, we have previously confirmed that we intend to ship a feature like this and are still planning to do so," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

As mentioned, there is no clarity on how the feature will work, whenever it launches. Will there be an expiration timer, or will the user be able to unsend messages till a limited time? It's still uncertain at this point. To recall, Messenger already offers a secret chat feature wherein messages can be timed to self-destruct with durations ranging from 5 seconds up to 1 day. A Facebook Messenger spokesperson has previously said that the only possible implementation would be an expiration timer similar to the secret chat feature, deleting messages after the timer expires.

Other Facebook services like WhatsApp and Instagram also allow users to delete sent messages. WhatsApp offers users with the ability to delete messages for a limited amount of time after the message has been sent. On the other hand, Instagram offers users with the ability to complete unsend a DM (Direct Message) provided the recipient has not seen the message.