Everything you need to know about WhatsApp's new 'Keep in Chat' feature

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer (CEO) of Facebook, on Friday, announced the "Keep in Chat" feature on WhatsApp. It will allow people to save important messages from a chat even when they have turned on the "disappearing messages" feature.

In 2020, the company had announced the "disappearing messages" feature allowing the new messages in a chat to disappear after seven days. In a person-to-person chat, the feature works if either of the senders has activated the feature.  

In 2021, the company added new features to the option. The users got the option to turn on disappearing messages by default for all new chats. When enabled, all new one-on-one chats will be set to disappear at either sender's chosen duration. The users were also allowed to apply the feature to a group chat.

Along with the original option of seven days, users also got two new durations for disappearing messages, 24 hours and 90 days.

For people who choose to switch on default disappearing messages, Whatsapp displays a message in the chats telling people that they have turned it on.

What is the "Keep in Chat" feature?

Now, the users of the app will be able to save the important messages, if any, even when the disappearing messages option is turned on.

To save a message, the user can select a message and tap on the "bookmark" feature which will appear adjacent to the reply option.

The sender will be notified that the other person wants to keep the message, and the sender will have the ability to veto the decision.

If a sender decides that their message can't be kept by others, the message will be deleted when the timer expires. The sender will have the final say in whether a person gets to save the messages or not.

The kept messages will be noted with a bookmark icon and will be organized by chat, in the Kept Messages folder.

The feature will roll out globally over the next few weeks.