Disappearing message and disappearing photos/videos (View Once) features has the main difference. If you enable the disappearing message, your chat and attached photos and videos will disappear after a week. But, the View Once feature will remove the photos/videos once the recipient opens it. The new feature works in personal chats and group chat as well. This option ensures more privacy in WhatsApp because your photo and video will disappear from your WhatsApp chat after the recipient opens it once. However, remember that people can always take a screenshot.

Steps to Send Disappearing Photos/Videos in WhatsApp

When writing this article, View Once is a feature of WhatsApp beta (v2.21.14.3). The company may soon roll out this feature in the stable channel.

  1. Open WhatsApp, start a chat, tap on the attach button and choose a photo or video that you want to share.
  2. Now, you will enter in the write a caption page. At the bottom, next to Add cation, you can see View Once button.
  3. Tap on the View Once button. The icon will turn green, which means you have set your photo/video to delete automatically. You cannot see photos/videos you sent in the chat window. Instead, you will see a text that says “photo” and a clock icon next to it. When the recipient opens the media file, the text “Photo” will automatically change to “opened.” So you can know your photo/video seen by the recipient. More Resources:

How to Hide a Contact, Chats and Calls on WhatsApp Without Using Any AppHow to Remove Audio from Video Before Sharing on WhatsAppUse WhatsApp’s Storage Management Tool to Free up Space on Your Phone3 Methods to Restore WhatsApp Chats on AndroidRecord WhatsApp Video Calls on Android