WhatsApp view once messages: A guide to secure messaging

In 2021, WhatsApp added another layer of security to its messaging application with the release of the ‘View Once’ feature for photos and videos. Two years later, the Meta-owned social messaging platform brought that feature to voice messages and re-introduced it for the desktop app. 

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While messaging has always been about peer-to-peer communication where all our conversation becomes a permanent record, there was a newfound interest in ephemeral messaging among smartphone users. Ephemeral messages, more commonly known as self-destructing messages, are messages that disappear after they’ve been opened by the recipient. 

While Snapchat made self-destructing messages popular, WhatsApp embraced it as an additional layer of secure messaging. Here is a guide to WhatsApp View Once feature and secure messaging on the world’s most popular messaging platform. 

What is WhatsApp View Once feature?

WhatsApp is popular because of its end-to-end encrypted messaging, which means even the Meta-owned company cannot see your messages. However, people always had the option to take screenshots of their conversations and share them with friends or family.  

To further enhance the privacy of messaging on its platform, WhatsApp introduced disappearing messages, where the chats sent by a user disappeared after a week. WhatsApp View Once is a middle ground between disappearing messages and default messaging which keeps a permanent record of your messages. 

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WhatsApp View Once feature is useful when you want to send sensitive or personal information such as a Wi-Fi password or pictures of new clothes you are trying on at a store, or a quick reaction to a moment in time. Once you receive a view once photo, video, or a voice message, you will need to open it within 14 days or it will expire from the chat. Here’s a look at how to send View Once messages on WhatsApp for both smartphones and desktop. 

How to send one one-time message in WhatsApp using View Once

Here’s a step-by step guide on how to send one-time view messages on WhatsApp.

Step 1: Open WhatsApp on your phone or desktop 

Step 2: Click on the private chat, group chat, or conversation where you want to send a one-time message. 

Step 3: In the chat, tap on the paperclip icon to bring up the attachment box. 

Step 4: Select Gallery to attach an existing image or video. You can also click on Camera to capture a new photo or record a video and send it to your recipient. 

Step 5: Now, choose the image you want to send. 

Step 6: Once you select the image, you will see an icon with “1” located at the right within the “Add a caption…” box. On WhatsApp, this symbol is a 1 located within a circle with half a solid line and half a dotted line. 

Step 7: Click on this 1 icon and you will notice that its background turns to a solid colour. WhatApp also alerts the sender that the media is now set as view once. 

Step 8: Tap the send button. 

Step 9: The recipient will be informed that they can view the photo or content only once.  

Once the recipient opens the message, WhatsApp will change the message status to “opened” in the chat if they have read receipts switched on. While the above steps are sending images or videos as View Once, you can follow the same steps for voice messages as well. They work the same on WhatsApp for desktop as well. 

How secure is WhatsApp View Once feature?

Now that you know everything about WhatsApp’s View Once feature and how to send a view once photo, video, or voice message, you will be wondering whether this feature is really spoof-proof. The short answer to that question is no and even WhatsApp acknowledges that gap in security. 

When you send a view once photo, video or voice message, the first step WhatsApp takes is to restrict users from viewing that content multiple times after they have been opened. WhatsApp will also not store media on the recipient’s phone but the app won’t restrict the recipient from taking screenshots. 

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WhatsApp will also not alert the user when the recipient takes a screenshot of a view once message. WhatsApp does ensure that once the message is gone, it is gone forever and users cannot use WhatsApp recovery methods to see them again. As a result, WhatsApp’s View Once feature is a good step towards enhancing privacy, but it doesn’t make it snoop-proof. 

If you are using WhatsApp’s View Once feature to send photos, videos, or voice messages, then I believe you know all the limitations associated with this feature. Let us know in the comments what kind of messages you send using the View Once feature on WhatsApp and whether it makes you feel secure about messaging.