How to send ‘view once’ images on WhatsApp

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Last year, WhatsApp rolled out an ephemeral messages feature. However, those messages were visible to the other person for seven days, and that’s quite a lot of days for information you want to disappear.

The company has been working on a feature that lets you send ‘view once’ photos and videos, and now it’s rolling it out to beta versions of the app across platforms.

Here’s how you can use it:

• Download the beta version of the Android app  — beta testing program on iOS is closed — or wait for the feature to roll out to the stable version.
• Go to the contact or group you want to send this one-time disappearing image to
• Select the image from the library or take a snap from the camera
• Tap on the icon displaying ‘1’ in the text box

• The person you sent it to will then get this image, without any preview, and will only be able to view it once — as compared to regular images

As WhatsApp’s information label about the feature notes, anyone can take a screenshot of the image you sent and preserve it forever. However, if they exit the window, the image is gone.

This is a handy feature for sensitive images or documents you want someone to look at, but not leave a trace. Happy messaging.