How to Unsend a Message on iPhone

One of iOS 16’s best features is the ability to edit or unsend a sent iMessage on iPhone. In this guide we’ll show you how to do it.

There might be a time where you send an iMessage to a friend or family member and immediately regret it due to the content of the message or a typo. On previous versions of iOS, you could only send another iMessage for clarity.

Fortunately, iOS 16 does away with that and iOS now allows you to unsend a message within two minutes or edit a message within fifteen minutes. You currently have up to five edits.

One other thing to keep in mind is that messages will only be unsent if the other person is also running iOS 16 on their iPhone. If they’re running iOS 15 or below, the message will remain.

With all of that in mind, here’s how to unsend, or edit, an iMessage you recently sent on your iPhone.

How to Unsend or Edit an iMessage on iPhone

Again, in order to unsend or edit iMessages on iPhone, you need to download iOS 16. For more about the operating system, check out our iOS 16 walkthrough.

Once you get iOS 16 on board your iPhone, head into your Messages application and find the message thread where you want to edit or unsend a message.

Find the message and perform a long press on the message you wish to unsend or edit. This will pull up the menu you see in the screenshot above.

If you wish to unsend the message, tap Undo Send. If you don’t see the Undo Send option, two minutes have probably elapsed which means there’s no way to unsend the message.

If it’s successful, you’ll see “You unsent a message” in place of the message. If the person is still running iOS 15, it will note that the other person may still see the message on devices where the software hasn’t been upgraded.

If you want to edit an iMessage on your iPhone, you’ll want to tap on Edit in the popup menu instead. You’ll then see a text box like the one depicted in the screenshot above.

If you don’t see Edit available, you’ve waited too long and you can’t edit the iMessage.

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