You Can Finally Delete Facebook Messenger Messages, And Here's How

We've all been there. It's 2 a.m. in the morning and you've sent a message to someone that you immediately regret to the person you like. While some social media platforms like Instagram allow you to delete a drunken message before the person ever sees it, it's a feature that's long been missing from Facebook's Messenger app.    

But worry no longer. On Tuesday, Facebook announced that they'd added a Messenger feature for anyone who has fired off a comment they regretted – a way to take it back. From now on, Messenger users will have a 10-minute window to delete a message, and as long as the person or someone in the group chat doesn't see the message before you delete it, all they'll see is a note telling everyone in a conversation that the remark was removed.

"Have you ever accidentally sent a message to the wrong group of friends, mistyped something, or simply wanted to remove a message in a chat?" Anna Iskikian, Product Manager for Messenger, asked rhetorically in a press release. 

"You're not the only one! Starting today, we are launching a feature where you can easily remove your message on Messenger." 

All you need to do is tap on the message you want to remove and select the option to “Remove for Everyone.” If you want to remove a message just for yourself, you can still do that anytime by selecting “Remove for You”.  

We've all been eagerly awaiting this feature since Jane Manchun Wong, a TechCrunch tipster, somehow managed to find the feature while using Messenger on Android. 

That was discovered after it emerged that Facebook has been quietly deleting messages CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sent via Messenger. After that came to light, Facebook promised to make the feature available to all users amid high demand. 

“We have discussed this feature several time,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge. “We will now be making a broader delete message feature available. This may take some time. And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not.”