How to Unsend a Facebook Message

You can now unsend a Facebook message within 10 minutes of sending it. The version 191.0 release of Facebook Messenger supports the unsend feature, so you must upgrade the app for it to work.

Let's say you just sent a message you instantly regretted, or you accidentally sent a highly personal message to the wrong person. Until 2018, delivered Facebook messages could not be unsent or removed from the recipient's inbox. Now, you have 10 minutes to take back your words, GIFs, emojis, or anything else you sent to an individual or group of people.

After 10 minutes, you can still delete the message from your own outbox, but the recipient will still have it in their inbox. In the future, Facebook says it plans to let users set expiration dates for messages and whole conversation threads.

Facebook users will still be able to see messages sent to them instantly, so unsending a message doesn't necessarily prevent the recipient from seeing it. If you send a message and automatically unsend it, the recipient might still receive a notification that you sent a message, even though they'll be unable to read it.

As part of its mission to prevent cyber bullying, Facebook administrators can still see unsent messages for a short period of time in case they're reported for policy violations. When someone unsends a message, the message is replaced by some text indicating a message was removed. That way, you can still report users for harassment by tapping the sender's name, then selecting Something’s Wrong in the Facebook Messenger app.

If you're using Facebook in a desktop browser on your computer, you can now unsend messages within 10 minutes like so:

Whether you have an Android or iOS device, the process for unsending a message sent via the Facebook Messenger app is the same.