If you are reading this blog, you have probably gotten into trouble that you have accidentally sent a message from your iPhone to another, and now you want to know how to delete messages on iPhone from both sides.
You are at the right place. In the following sections, you will learn in what conditions you can and cannot delete messages from both sides on iPhone. You will also get to know about a couple of third-party messenger apps that allow you to get the task done using their built-in feature.
When you delete messages on iPhone does it delete for the other person?
Unfortunately, NO. As far as simple text messages are concerned, iPhone doesn’t automatically delete them from both the sending and receiving devices. Therefore, if you don’t want the receiver to see the message that you sent, you must have physical access to their phone, go to their Message Inbox, and remove your message from there. This is the only way to delete messages from both sides.
Now, because it is practically not possible to take control of the other person’s iPhone, once you have sent a text message, there’s no turning back. If it is iMessage, then a trick we are going to introduce in the next part may help to avoid the sent iMessages being viewed.
Update on September 13, 2022
iOS 16 allows you to undo sending an iMessage within two minutes, so it is possible to delete messages on iPhone from both sides by this feature. If it has been more than two minutes after the iMessage has been delivered, you can still edit the message.
How to Delete iMessages on iPhone from Both Sides
Well, iPhone doesn’t allow this either. However, when it comes to iMessages, there’s a trick that most people use if they send a message erroneously, but there’s a catch. This trick works only if you use it within a couple of seconds after tapping the ‘Send’ button.
Also, when sending large files such as high-resolution images or long videos as an attachment, you get some additional time as it may take a while to get those large entities delivered. This isn’t the case when you send text messages, which means you must act quite fast.
You can follow the step-by-step instructions given below to see how to delete iMessages on iPhone from both sides:
Step 1: Get to the Control Center
Right after you tapped the Send icon and realized that it was a mistake, swipe down your iPhone’s screen from the top-right corner (on iPhone X or above models) to get to Control Center.
Note: If you are using iPhone 8 or earlier model, you must swipe the screen from the bottom to upwards to access Control Center.
Tap the Airplane icon to put your iPhone to Airplane Mode so that all the outgoing transmissions are instantaneously halted.
Step 2: Select the Message
After enabling Airplane Mode on your iPhone, wait until you see a notification stating that the sending process has failed. Once this happens, long-tap the iMessage, tap More from the menu that appears, and tap to select the message(s) that you want to delete.
Step 3: Delete the Message
Tap the Delete icon from the bottom-left corner. When the confirmation popup appears, tap Delete Message (or Delete <number> Messages for multiple messages where <number> is replaced with the number of messages you selected for deletion. E.g., Delete 2 Messages here).
Apps that Allow Message Deletion on iPhone from Both Sides
If you don’t find the traditional methods of using Message or iMessage for messaging quite impressive because you cannot delete the sent messages on iPhone from both sides, you may consider some third-party apps that allow you to do so. The good news is that you don’t have to have physical access to the destination devices to get this done.
The two most trusted mobile programs that are popular among a majority of people are WhatsApp and WeChat.
Everyone has heard about WhatsApp, and probably every smartphone owner has it installed and is using it for instant messaging. After Facebook (now Meta) purchased WhatsApp a few years before, the company added several new features to the app, and is still continuously making it better for end-users’ convenience.
One important option that Meta integrated into the program is ‘Delete for Everyone’ which deletes the sent messages from both senders’ and receivers’ devices simultaneously. However, the choice remains available only for a couple of minutes post sending, and the solution works only if both source and destination smartphones have the latest version of WhatsApp installed in them.
Also, if you sent a media file with the message and the attachment is downloaded on the receiver’s device, you won’t see the ‘Delete for Everyone’ option at the time of deletion, and you will end up removing the message only from your phone.
To learn how to delete messages on iPhone from both sides while using WhatsApp, you can follow the steps given below:
- Get to the receiver’s chat box.
- Long-tap the message that you want to delete.
- Tap Delete from the bottom of the menu that appears next.
- Ensure that the unwanted message is selected.
- Tap the Delete icon from the bottom-left corner.
- Tap Delete for Everyone from the box that pops up at the bottom.
- Tap OK on the deletion confirmation box that shows up.
WeChat is not as popular as WhatsApp is. Nevertheless, the app still allows you to delete the sent messages from the receiver’s device if you initiate the process within 2 minutes of sending, and if the messages are not yet read by the recipient. If any of the two conditions stands untrue, i.e., if you try to delete a message after two minutes of sending or if the receiver has read the message, this process won’t work.
To know how to delete messages on iPhone from both sides while using WeChat, you can follow the steps given below:
- Get to the target receiver’s chat box.
- Long-tap the message that you want to delete from both sides.
- Tap Recall.
Note: Optionally, you can tap Re-edit after recalling the message, tap OK on the information box, and edit and resend the message.
You can re-edit a message only within 5 minutes of recalling it. Once the time exceeds the threshold, the message is removed forever.
Conclusion
It is a pity that there is no straightforward feature to delete messages on iPhone from both sides. We hope the trick to avoid the sent iMessages being viewed by the receiver will help sometimes. If you want to switch messenger app, WhatsApp and WeChat as reliable messenger apps, are good choices.
