WhatsApp has finally released a new feature called “View Once”. As of July 2021, the WhatsApp beta version was released. After extensive testing, it is now rolled out to all WhatsApp users. Receivers can open the message only once before it disappears.
View Once is meant to give senders more control over the media they send so that the chatting app is more private, but there are still a few minor kinks to work out.
Users who need to send sensitive information, such as Wi-Fi passwords or personal contact information, will find it helpful. You can view the message once before it disappears. Although the message disappeared after being opened, you could still take a screenshot of it before it disappeared. In addition, the app doesn’t alert you if someone takes a screenshot of your message.
Another concern with this new feature is that if you send a View Once message to a group on WhatsApp with blocked members, these blocked members will also be able to open and view the message.
Although many privacy advocates raised these issues during a beta experiment, it doesn’t appear any revisions were applied to the stable release version extending out to all users. We can only expect that these issues will be addressed in a forthcoming update so that such a feature provides the privacy that is needed.
It’s still a valuable feature to have and one that WhatsApp users have been requesting for a while.
How to use View Once
After you install the new WhatsApp update coming this week, you’ll be able to use View Once on your Whatsapp messages, media, and voice notes. This option can be located by tapping the paperclip icon, adding or recording your media, and tapping the 1 icon attached to the send button. By doing this, the recipient will only be able to view the message once.
Although the new feature allows you to send messages and media that are only viewable once, we are concerned that developers forgot to add a few more features to truly make this feature private. Regardless, it’s a valuable feature to have, and we hope these issues will be addressed in a future update.