WhatsApp’s View Once feature claims to improve user privacy by making their messages self-delete after being viewed once. In practice, however, this is more of a matter of lip service.

WhatsApp’s View Once option has been available on Android since June 2021 and has just begun testing on iOS, giving users the ability to change the setting before sending anything. Enabling View Once will delete the message after the recipient views it, preventing them from going back and viewing it again later. It sounds like a simple way to tackle privacy in theory, but there are several elements that make View Once all but useless.

"After controversial changes to their privacy policy earlier this year, WhatsApp is trying to gain user trust by incorporating new privacy-focused features," Peter Baltazar, technical content writer at MalwareFox, told Lifewire in an email interview. "The [View Once] feature could be useful if WhatsApp didn't notify recipients that the message was deleting itself. Unfortunately, that's not the case."

The privacy and security angle is the main focus of WhatsApp's View Once feature, but in practice it offers neither. Yes, a View Once message will delete itself after it's been viewed, but the app currently doesn't block recipients from taking a screenshot of the message for safekeeping. WhatsApp also doesn't notify senders if a screenshot of their message has been taken.