The rise of smartphones has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. From our obsession with emoji to text talk (TTYL, FML, WTH), it is now easier than ever to contact friends and family. Maybe a little too easy.
It's a mistake that's become all the more common – switching through different messages, you can confuse one chat bubble for another. Suddenly you've hit send and that hilariously relevant GIF just went to that person you spoke to once three years ago.
The green line is racing across the top of your phone, nearly lost to the mainframe. What do you do?
Thankfully, there are a number of options to protect yourself from the damage done by ducking autocorrect and sending messages by mistake. WIRED looks at the Before, During and After options for rescuing yourself from texting disaster.
Autocorrect. The root of many texting misunderstandings. Software that's supposed to help you can, in fact, hinder you. The solution? Reclaim your control.
The autocorrect feature lurks in Settings on iOS. In Settings, go to Keyboard and change autocorrect to OFF. This is different from the predictive text feature, which can also be turned off in this same menu. On Android, go to Settings, scroll down to Language & Input, and tap the Google keyboard. Text correction allows you to disable autocorrect with a simple toggle feature.
Another option is to abandon your phone's inbuilt messaging service for other apps dedicated to deleting messages before they've been delivered.
Privates, for instance, lets users recall a text or picture message before it's been opened by the recipient. A message can be retrieved simply by tapping the "Recall" button, and the message will promptly be deleted from Privates' server. While this only works if the message hasn't been opened, it allows for a window of time after the delivery of your text to delete it.
The green or blue bar is racing across your screen. Time is of the essence. If you have an iPhone, the Control Centre is your new best friend.
Open the Control Centre by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen and switch Airplane Mode on (depicted by a plane icon). If you're fast enough, your message will display as undelivered and you can prevent it from sending before re-enabling your data connection by deleting it from the drop-down menu.
This option works better the faster you can pull up the drop screen, and for phones with slightly slower data networks. By cancelling the message before it's sent, not only will it never be delivered but you won't have to try to retrieve it. So whatever your OS, make sure you know this shortcut well. If you're fast enough, Airplane Mode can save your social life.
Luckily, we've reached peak social anxiety about autocorrect. Messaging firms such as Whatsapp have heard your cries for a message alteration or delete option.
The Facebook-owned messaging firm is said to be working on a new feature that could let you unsend and edit your messages. Beta tests suggest that, as part of an upcoming update, you will be able to press and hold a sent message within the iOS version of WhatsApp and see two new options. Pressing 'Edit' will let you change the content of the message, while 'Unsend' lets you pull the text from the conversation – magically vanishing from your chat history.
This feature is not widely available yet but is expected to launch soon.
However, the unsend feature will only work during a five-minute window and when the recipient hasn't already seen the text. Once a message has been opened and read, we're afraid you're simply left with old school coping mechanisms: laugh it off or apologise.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
