Typically, when someone deletes the messages they sent you on WhatsApp – even after reading the message – the deleted texts carry a message. ‘This message has been deleted’ Placeholder. Now your friend or another person may have manually deleted these messages. And you wonder what happens to old messages that suddenly disappear in a WhatsApp conversation without a placeholder informing you that the sender has deleted it?
If after a while you can’t find a particular message from your WhatsApp conversation with a friend or colleague, it’s likely because they deleted it or opened Disappearing Messages. Before we move on to explaining why WhatsApp messages are disappearing, let’s understand why WhatsApp messages are disappearing.
Why Do WhatsApp Messages Disappear?
There are two ways to look at this concern. First, if someone decides to delete a few random messages from your conversation, you’ll see this: This message has been deleted Placeholder. Unless this message is part of a backup, you can’t do anything about it. But as soon as you restore this backup, the deleted message will disappear. In short, if someone has made a manual effort to remove messages from the conversation, you can’t do anything about it. It is their choice and once these messages are deleted they will be deleted from WhatsApp servers forever.
These deleted messages cannot be recovered or restored unless you redirect the conversation to another chat or take a screenshot or export the chat as an archive.
The other new way is the Disappearing Messages feature which automatically deletes messages or media after enabling the option. Again, there is no way to recover these deleted texts unless you forward them to another chat with the lost messages open or take screenshots of the conversation.
In short, you will need to actively take a screenshot or redirect the conversations to another window to keep track of a conversation. These things can make anyone nervous. So, make sure you only have a casual or formal conversation with trusted people on WhatsApp. We can only recommend that you avoid sharing confidential information, passwords or other types of details on WhatsApp. This is because even though the messages are deleted, cannot be recovered and are permanently removed from WhatsApp servers, anyone can take a screenshot or click a photo of the conversation.
Now, check what is Disappearing Messages and how you can stop texts from WhatsApp conversation. Evanensco! (The disappearing spell from Harry Potter) is upon you.
What are Disappearing Messages?
You get tons of messages, pictures, videos, voice notes and files of all kinds from individual and group chats. Now, how often do you revisit these messages? Maybe for reading them or for reference? You’re barely doing it, aren’t you? Especially thousands of texts you get from group chats. The thing about these old WhatsApp messages and media files is that they defragment and consume your device storage. As WhatsApp said, some messages don’t have to be around forever. Hence, the introduction of Disappearing Messages. Basically, all the messages you send after turning this feature on can be called Disappearing messages as they will be deleted after one week (7 days). You can have fun with these disappearing messages as long as no one is seriously wronged or hurt in the process.
When Disappearing messages are enabled for individual or group conversation on WhatsApp, sent and received text and media files will be automatically deleted for both parties after seven (7) days. Yes, that’s the time limit WhatsApp offers users as the feature is currently available and can offer a selection of timers ranging from seconds to hours – think aloud.
Along with the storage-saving benefit of this feature, it also has the added benefit of privacy. In fact, WhatsApp’s Disappearing feature is almost similar to Telegram’s Secret Chat feature. Let’s show you how it works and how to know if you’ve messaged someone who has Disappearing Messages enabled.
How Disappearing Messages Work
First of all, we should mention that this feature works on all supported devices and platforms i.e. WhatsApp for Android, iOS and even WhatsApp Web. Follow the steps below to enable Disappearing Messages.
Stage 1: Launch WhatsApp and open the chat for which you want to enable Disappearing Messages for its messages.
Step 2: Then tap the contact name (or phone number) to open the Contact Information page.
Stage 3: Tap Disappearing Messages.
Step 4: To choose.
When you return to the chat window, you will be notified that any new messages you send after enabling Disappearing Messages will disappear from the chat seven (7) days after they are sent. WhatsApp notifies the person/recipient that you have Disappeared messages enabled for the conversation.
The same procedure applies to Android and iOS devices as well as WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Desktop app.
Note: For group chats, only the group admin can enable or disable Disappearing Messages. However, all group members will be notified when the feature is enabled or disabled.
Disappearing Messages: Considerations
Some indicators let you know that the person or group you’re texting has Disappearing Messages enabled.
In-Chat Notification
The most obvious is the notification WhatsApp sends you when a contact or group admin opens Disappearing Messages.
The notification is pretty straightforward and clear. However, this notification may disappear in (next) countless messages. This brings us to the second (and unmissable) Disappearing messages indicator.
View Image Icon
Notice a timer or countdown icon in the lower right corner of the contact’s or group chat’s screenshot.
If you find one, that means any messages you’ve sent or received – within that period – will disappear from conversation after seven (7) days.
How to Stop WhatsApp Messages from Disappearing?
This is the most important question for you, and it is understandable that you should avoid such an inconvenience. Think of the disappearing messages feature as a two-driver car. So both parties in the conversation (sender and receiver) are in the driver’s seat. For context, if Alex is texting Jennifer on WhatsApp and enables Disappearing Messages, this feature will automatically be enabled for Jennifer as well.
Interestingly, if Jennifer doesn’t want her messages to disappear after 7 days, she can disable Disappearing messages on her end. He just needs to go to chat settings and set Disappearing messages to Off (see steps above).
It is important to note that messages sent during the time that disappearing messages are enabled and disabled will disappear after seven days.
These texts will disappear after 7 days.
To put this in perspective, if Alex enabled Disappearing messages at 7 PM and he sent you a series of texts before disabling Disappearing messages first by 8 PM, then Disappearing messages were received (or sent) messages within a 1-hour period of messages enabled. It will disappear after 7 days. Therefore, the only way to stop or prevent messages from disappearing on WhatsApp is to turn off the Disappearing messages option.
Can Deleted Messages Be Recovered or Recovered?
Answer is no. Once deleted, messages are gone forever – unless you take a screenshot or forward the text to another chat window or app. Images, videos, documents, GIF, etc. You can save media files to your device before they are deleted.
Neither Witchcraft nor Bug
There it is; The reason why after a few days you can no longer find old messages in a WhatsApp chat. Your WhatsApp is not buggy; nor is the sender using some kind of smart tech magic to remotely delete messages on your phone. If you have other WhatsApp related issues or questions, you can check our WhatsApp troubleshooting section.
Next: Did WhatsApp notify you of Disappearing Messages Disabled? Click on the next link to find out what this message means and what you can do about it.
