If you don’t delete videos, photos and messages on WhatsApp, they will eventually take up a lot of storage space on your phone. That’s why you can now automatically delete new messages in WhatsApp after a certain time. This is how you keep your chats clean. PlusOnline explains how it works.
New messages can be automatically deleted after 24 hours, 7 days or 90 days with this function. WhatsApp also calls it: messages with an expiration date. You set such an expiry date per chat.
Why?
There are probably chats where you always want to keep all photos, videos and messages. You therefore do not set an expiry date for this. More suitable are chats in which there is only some chatting or chats that are only used briefly, for example because a joint gift has to be bought. You no longer need those messages after 7 or 90 days. Removing them automatically saves storage space.
Note: you set an expiration date for the entire chat, so the new messages are automatically deleted for everyone in the chat. In group chats it is therefore useful to briefly discuss the function, because perhaps not everyone wants to have new messages deleted.
Only for new posts
Good to know: if you set an expiration date for a chat, this only applies to the new messages that arrive from that moment on. All old messages that are already in the chat will not be lost.
How does it work?
First make sure that you have the latest version of WhatsApp on your device so that you can use all functions.
Setting messages with an expiration date works like this:
1. Open WhatsApp
2. Click on the chat where you want to set an expiration date
3. Tap the chat name on top
4. Tap Messages with expiration date
5. Tap Get on
6. Choose the desired expiration time
7. Messages with an expiration date will now appear in the chat
Extra trick
Do you think: handy, I want that with all my new chats! Which can. You can set a ‘default timer’ for all new individual chats. Follow the same step-by-step plan as mentioned above and do not choose the desired expiration date in step 6, but click on ‘Try a default timer for messages’ or ‘Update your timer for standard messages in Settings’. Then choose the desired new expiration date for all new chats.
