What you need to know about the new edit and unsend options for iMessage

CNN Business
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For anyone who’s prone to misspellings, texting the wrong person, or triggering thoughts they might later regret, there’s now some hope. Apple introduced two of its most requested features: the ability to edit and unsend iMessages.

This week, Apple released a file Latest operating system iOS 16Which Allows users to edit an iMessage up to five times within 15 minutes after sending it and Unsend any message for up to two minutes after sending it. Users just need to tap and hold on the sent message, then select Edit or Undo Send.

But there are some caveats. For starters, it’s not exactly Stealth effort: Recipients receive an alert that the message has not been sent or edited but do not see the specified change.

Both users also need messaging on Apple devices, so it won’t work with Android exchanges. It works best when the recipient is also using iOS 16 – otherwise they will get an inconvenient schedule for the changes made. SMS messages cannot be unsent or modified either.

The sender should hope the recipient does not see a preview of the original message on the lock screen before editing it or not sending it.

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(AAPL) The catch-up game is played on platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Gmail, which also offer options to edit or delete messages after they’ve been sent. Twitter recently announce It tests users’ ability to edit tweets.

“With Twitter and Apple enabling this feature as well, this is clearly a trend that many mobile users are requesting from these platforms,” said Lian Jye Su, director of research at market research firm ABI Research. “As the barrier to switching messaging platforms is close to zero, rich and easy-to-use features have become a critical competitive advantage.”

While they are common requests, Editing and unsending messages can 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 has been edited, Apple can help maintain some transparency, according to Ramon Lamas, an analyst at IDC.

However, even with these new options, Lllamas recommends 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 noteworthy new iMessage features include the ability to mark messages as unread so that it’s easier to reply to them later and the option to recover recently deleted messages for up to 30 days .