For anyone prone to typos, texting the wrong person, or spouting off thoughts they may later regret, there is now some hope. Apple has delivered two of its most requested features: the ability to edit and unsend iMessages.
This week, Apple released its latest operating system, iOS 16, which allows users to edit an iMessage up to five times within 15 minutes of sending it, and not send any message for up to 2 minutes after that. his mission. Users just need to long press on the sent message and then select “edit” or “unsend”.
But there are some caveats. For starters, it’s not exactly a stealth effort: recipients get a notification that the message wasn’t sent or edited, but they don’t see that particular change.
Both users also need to send messages on Apple devices, so it won’t work for Android exchanges. It works best when the recipient is also using iOS 16 — otherwise they’ll get an awkward timeline of the changes made. SMS messages cannot be sent or edited either.
And the sender has to hope that the recipient didn’t see a preview of the original message on the lock screen before editing or sending it.
Apple ( AAPL ) is playing catchup on platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Gmail, which also offer options to edit or delete messages after they’re sent. Twitter recently announced that it is testing the ability for users to edit tweets.
“With Twitter and Apple now enabling this feature, it’s clear that this is a trend that many mobile users are demanding from these platforms,” said Lian Jye Su, director of research at market research firm ABI Research. “Since the barrier to switching messaging platforms is almost nil, rich and user-friendly features have become a critical competitive advantage.”
While popular requests, editing and not sending messages could have an unintended impact on transparency and accountability, especially on public platforms, by removing or altering the written record. By making it clear that the message was edited, Apple could help maintain some transparency, according to IDC analyst Ramon Llamas.
Even with these new options, however, Lllamas recommends that people read what they send “because it can come back to haunt you … even if you edit it.”
iOS 16 is now available for any iPhone model dating back to the iPhone 8, which was released in 2017. Other notable new iMessage features include the ability to mark messages as unread so they’re easier to reply to later, and recover recently deleted messages for up to 30 days.
