WhatsApp bringing ‘View Once Photos and Videos’ feature, inspired by Instagram
WhatsApp introduced a new feature called “View Once photos and videos” for both Android and iOS device users. While enabled, the feature itself destroys the shared image or video just after opening by the recipient in order to stop leaving a digital record.
As its a big feature, the company itself published a blog post explaining the functionality of this new View Once photos and videos tool. For example, you might send a View Once a photo of some new clothes you’re trying on at a store, a quick reaction to a moment in time, or something sensitive like a Wi-Fi password.
Media shared by View Once is protected by end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot see them, the company claims. However, the View Once media will be clearly marked with a new “one-time” icon in order to provide an early understanding to the recipient before opening the file.
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Just after going back from the opened media, the message will appear as “opened” to avoid any confusion about what was happening in the chat at the time. Surprisingly, the Facebook-owned company opened a broader rollout of this feature as it’s expected to cover every WhatsApp consumer in the coming days.
About this feature
You can now send photos and videos that disappear from your WhatsApp chat after the recipient has opened them once for added privacy.
- Media will not be saved to the recipient’s Photos or Gallery.
- Once you send a view once photo or video, you won’t be able to view it again.
- You can’t forward, save, star, or share photos or videos that were sent or received with view once media enabled.
- You can only see if a recipient has opened a view once photo or video if they have read receipts turned on.
- If you don’t open the photo or video within 14 days of it being sent, the media will expire from the chat.
- You must select view once media each time you want to send a view once photo or video.
- View once media can be restored from backup if the message is unopened at the time of back up. If the photo or video has already been opened, the media will not be included in the backup and can’t be restored.
