Last Updated on October 28, 2017 by Larious

WhatsApp is rolling out the Delete for Everyone (Recall) feature for all users! DELETE FOR EVERYONE OFFICIALLY ENABLED! WhatsApp was working since the last year on a feature that allows to revoke your messages on the recipents’ phones.
This feature has been wanting by users, that can wrongly send messages to a different chat, or maybe they write something that they didn’t really want to send.Since today, users won’t have anymore this problem, because WhatsApp is finally rolling out for iOS, Android, Windows Phone users the possibility to recall messages, allowing you to definitely delete messages in chats and groups if the recipients have the latest WhatsApp version installed: this feature is now called Delete for Everyone (but consider that the activation is very slow).

The Delete for Everyone feature works for any message type in WhatsApp: text messages, images, videos, GIFs, voice messages, stickers (in future), contact cards, files, locations, quoted messages and status replies.

But how the Delete for Everyone feature really works?
When you delete a message for everyone, your WhatsApp sends a fake copy of the message to the recipient. When the recipient will receive your copy, his device won’t show you the notification and it won’t save it in his chat history, but it will check if there is the ID of the message in the database: if it will find the message, the message will be correctly revoked (if the recipients are using the latest version of WhatsApp).

Information that you should know about the recall feature:

· The recalled message will be also deleted in the notifications center (on iOS) of the recipient at the exact moment you have revoked it (if the Internet connection is available for him), instead on Android the message will be updated with the “This message was deleted for everyone” text.

· If you want to delete for everyone a message that has been quoted, note that WhatsApp doesn’t recall the message contained in a quoted message, at the moment.
· It’s not possible to delete for everyone messages sent in a Broadcast List.
· Be sure to be fast, because you can delete for everyone messages within 7 minutes, after witch you won’t be able to revoke them.
· It’s very necessary that the recipient has the latest WhatsApp update installed in order to get the delete for everyone operation working, otherwise it will fail. WhatsApp took care to make the delete for everyone feature working for older versions too, but obviously it won’t work if the other user has a very old version where Delete for Everyone hasn’t been implemented yet. This can be a reason why they were waiting so much time to enable the feature. Note that these old builds where the delete for everyonefeature wasn’t implemented should be all expired.
· Be careful to send messages that you want to delete for everyone to symbian users. WhatsApp for Symbian does not support the delete for everyone feature, so if you will delete for everyone a message that has been delivered to a Symbian user, it won’t be revoked.
Note that WhatsApp won’t notify you if the message was successfully recalled or if it is failed for the reason abovementioned, also if you read in the bubble “This message was deleted for everyone”, that is only a simple indication.

You may receive the activation of the feature at any time, but you should consider that the rolling out of the Delete for Everyone feature is very slow.
If the feature is already enabled for you, you will be able to use it also through WhatsApp Web/Desktop since now.

If you didn’t receive the activation yet, you may try to reinstall WhatsApp in order to download from the server the latest configuration, if it’s already available for you, but note that if this won’t work, you have to wait only a little more.
If you are one of these unluckly users and you would like to try to reinstall WhatsApp because you won’t want to wait any longer:
· Open your WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Backup and perform it.
· Delete WhatsApp (and be sure to remind your Two-Step Verification PIN if you have previously enabled it, because WhatsApp may ask it later) and reinstall the latest stable version available from the store.
· Configure your WhatsApp, inserting your phone number again, the SMS code and the Two-Step Verification PIN (if you have previously enabled it), restore your chat history and verify if recalling is possible for you, sending a new message.