Messenger
New Whatsapp symbol appeared: This is behind the “bookmark”
© Whatsapp and mdphoto16 / Getty Images
A gray tick, two gray ticks, two blue ticks: the symbols in Whatsapp messages are well known. But soon a new one will be added.
The symbol on a Whatsapp message has so far primarily provided information about the delivery status. A clock means that the message has not yet been sent. A single tick confirms the sending, two gray ticks are to be understood as confirmation of receipt and two blue ticks correspond to a read confirmation – provided the other party has activated the function. According to “WABetaInfo” will soon be followed by a new icon that looks a lot like a bookmark.
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Keep self-deleting messages on Whatsapp
The new symbol appeared for the first time in a beta version for Android smartphones. It is related to the “Self-Deleting Messages” feature. This can be activated for group chats and private conversations. It causes content to be automatically removed for all participants after a certain period of time. According to Whatsapp, this should serve security and save storage space.
The problem: Even important information disappears over time if you have not saved it elsewhere via detours. With a new function, Whatsapp wants to enable users to keep media in chats with an expiration date. The new icon thus indicates that someone has saved the corresponding message and thus excluded it from being automatically deleted.
If someone saves a message in a chat with self-deleting content in the future, this bookmark will be displayed.
© WABetaInfo
According to “WABetaInfo”, this is displayed to each participant in the chat history and can be undone with little effort, so that messages that were previously saved also disappear from the history according to the respective rules.
With the ability to keep messages and media, the developers are taking another step towards chat participants. Whatsapp introduced a lock for screen recordings last year to make it more difficult to save self-deleting content.
As is often the case with new functions in a current beta, “WABetaInfo” cannot estimate when and if the new symbol will make it into the final versions in the app stores.
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