Last year WhatsApp teased the ability to allow users to unsend messages by letting users essentially delete messages that they sent. The initial timeframe that WhatsApp gave to users was seven minutes, which we suppose is good enough but they later expanded on this by giving users over an hour.
However according to WABetaInfo who tracks changes made in the betas of WhatsApp, the latest beta is extending that timeframe even further. It claims that in the latest beta, the time the recipient receives the revoke request has been extended to 13 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds.
What this means is that in the event you (the sender) deletes a message for everyone in a chat, but the person you sent the message to had their phone off and thus the message wasn’t delivered. This means that once you select the delete message, there will be a countdown of 13 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds for that person to turn on their phone and receive the delete request.
Anything beyond that means that the message won’t be deleted. According to WABetaInfo, they are speculating that these changes were made in response to an abuse of the feature by users who use modded versions of WhatsApp, where they could delete messages that were sent weeks, months, or even years ago.
LIMITS UPDATED!
WhatsApp has updated the "Recipient limit".
What does it mean? If you delete a message for everyone, but the recipient won't receive the revoke request within 13h, 8m, 16s (maybe because the phone was off), the message will **not** be revoked.
..(1/2)— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) October 11, 2018