WhatsApp has announced a new feature that allows users to keep important messages that they may want to refer to in the future, regardless of whether the Disappearing Messages setting is turned on or not, after testing it for a period in the beta version. The new feature is called "Keep in Chat" and once a message is kept, it will be visible to everyone in the chat and will not disappear when the disappearing messages timer expires. All kept messages will appear in a folder called "Kept Messages" in the chat settings, sorted by chat.
WhatsApp has launched this feature under the slogan "Sender Superpower" because the sender has complete control over it. When someone saves a message, a notification will be sent to the sender, who will have the ability to approve or reject the save. If the sender chooses to reject saving the message, no one else in the chat can save it again. If the sender rejects the save, the message will be automatically deleted when the timer ends. This way, the sender has the final say in protecting the messages they send when turning on the "Disappearing Messages" setting in chats.
Here's how to save disappearing messages in WhatsApp:
- Go to the conversation that contains the message you want to keep.
- Press and hold the message you want to keep, then tap the bookmark icon located at the top of the conversation.
- The message sender will receive a notification that you want to save it. If they agree, the message will be saved in the saved messages folder for future reference, and the saved messages will also remain in the conversation for everyone to read.
How to access saved messages:
- Go to the conversation where you have saved messages.
- Click on the name of the person you were messaging or the name of the group which appears in the upper left corner, to go to its settings page.
- Scroll down to the option "Kept Messages" and click on it to view the saved messages.
How to cancel message retention:
You will have 30 days from the time you decided to retain the message to cancel retention, and you can do so by following these steps:
- Go to the WhatsApp conversation where you retained the message.
- Press and hold the message you want to cancel retention for.
- Tap on the bookmark icon that appears at the top of the conversation, then tap on the Ok option."
