How to unsend or delete a Facebook message on both ends

Facebook Messenger is an easy way to connect with your Facebook friends via chat. Yet what happens when you send the wrong message to someone or want to delete your chat? With this article, you will learn how to unsend or delete those messages. 

It is important to note that there is a difference between deleting/un-sending a message and deleting the entire chat conversation. When you delete or unsend a message, you have the option to unsend the message for yourself and/or for everyone else up to 6 months after it was sent. When you delete the chat conversation, your entire message history with that contact will be deleted on your end. This means that you will not be able to see any of your messages with that contact in your chat history, but the receiver will still be able to see them in theirs. 

Therefore to delete/unsend a message: 

1. Open Messenger and click on the conversation where you want to unsend your message.
2. If you are on an Android device, tap and hold the message you want to unsend, and press unsend. If you are on an iOS device, tap and hold the message, select more, and then press unsend. If you are on a desktop, you may need to click the three horizontal dots for more to select unsend. If using the desktop Facebook Messenger app, right click and select unsend.
3. Once you select unsend, you will be given two options:

• Unsend for You: The message you selected will still be visible for the receiver of the message, yet it will no longer be visible to you.
• Unsend for Everyone: The message you selected will not be visible on both ends. In other words, neither you nor the receiver of the message will be able to see what was sent. If you select this option, the receiver will see a note that indicates you “unsent a message”.  You can chose to remove the “you unsent a message” notification, yet it will only be removed on your end.

Please note that while un-sending messages seems to permanently delete them, either user may still have access to the message history, including the “unsent message” notification, if they chose to download their Facebook data. The content of an unsent message will only be visible if the conversation is reported to Facebook within 14 days of the message being unsent. Therefore, remember to be respectful and follow the community guidelines when sending a message on Facebook or any other social media app.