Meta-owned WhatsApp on Friday introduced a ‘Keep in Chat’ feature that will allow users in a disappearing message thread to long-press a message and choose to save it.
WhatsApp has called this “sender superpower,” and it will be the choice of the sender to allow others in the chat to keep certain messages for later.
“Anyone in a disappearing message thread can long press on a message to keep it. The sender will be notified if it was saved and can decide if it stays or remains a disappearing message,” Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.
While this extra layer of privacy protects messages from falling into the wrong hands, sometimes there’s that occasional voice note or key piece of information you want to keep.
To make this work, the sender will be notified when someone keeps a message, and the sender will have the ability to veto the decision.
“If you’ve decided your message can’t be kept by others, your decision is final, no one else can keep it and the message will be deleted when the timer expires. This way you have the final say on how messages you send are protected,” said WhatsApp.
Messages you’ve saved on your WhatsApp will be noted with a bookmark icon and you can see these messages, organized by chat, in the Kept Messages folder.
The new feature will roll out globally over the next few weeks, said the company.