One of the biggest challenges one will encounter when sending a text message is by sending it to a wrong person. What comes to the mind will be can you unsend a text on your phone.
It is more difficult if the text message is a sensitive one and which you would want to unsend the message after hitting on the send button.
This brings us to the question of the day.
Can you unsend a text?
The straight answer is no. You cannot unsend a text message after you have hit on the send button, be it on iphone or android.
As at this moment of writing this post, there’s no possibility to unsend a text message and that is quite painful especially if mistakenly sent to wrong person.
However, there’s only one solution to it.
That is to apologize for sending a text message to a wrong person though you have to try this one quick solution before going ahead to apologize for the mistake.
How to unsend a text
To unsend a text message on your phone, after hitting on the send button, immediately enable airplane mode and the text message won’t go through or get delivered to the recipient. However, this is how fast you are because immediately it shows sent that’s it
What will follow next will be delivered even if you go ahead to get rid of the sent message on your mobile phone.
Now let me show you how to unsend a text message.
The solution
Immediately you hit on the send button and realized that you sent the text message to a wrong number, kindly out your phone on airplane mode and further delete the text message.
Wait for 30 minutes before disabling offline mode or turning off the airplane mode. As long as the sent text message never say delivered after hitting on the send button, then you are lucky cause it simply means the recipient haven’t received the text message.
Once you don’t have a cellular network service on your cellphone, the text message will never get delivered
If after hitting on the send button and you saw sent followed by delivered, I’m sorry you cannot unsend the message rather than to apologize for the mistake or simply ignore it though you should let the recipient know it was a mistake and the sent text message wasn’t for him or her.
What do you do when you text the wrong person?
When you send a text message to wrong person on your mobile phone, you have to send another text message to the person apologizing about the previous sent text message.
I tell you immediately you hit on the send button and the message says sent, within few seconds or a minute the recipient will definitely receive the sent message. So deleting the sent text message on your mobile phone won’t help you either and this is what you have to do.
Open your message app and send another text message to the wrong person.
Get started by saying;
Hello, good day. Please kindly ignore the text message you received from me as it was a mistake. I mistakenly sent the text message to your number due to an oversight, please I apologize for it and ignore it or probably delete the message from your phone.
Thank you.
Definitely the recipient will understand and in most cases will delete the text message.
Aside from sms text message, when it comes to instant messaging apps and services like whatsapp, Skype, Facebook messenger, iMessage, telegram, etc you still can’t unsend a text message once the recipient open the message.
On whatsapp we have what is called delete for everyone, but you have to be very fast in doing it else it won’t work. That is to say once you made a mistake and wants to unsend the whatsapp message, you have to be very fast about it else if the recipient opens the whatsapp message you cannot unsend or delete for everyone but rather yours.
For sms text message, this feature isn’t available at all.
This is why you need to check if everything you wrote including the recipient phone number is correct before hitting on the send button.
How to unsend a message on iphone?
Kindly note that you cannot unsend a text message on iphone and this includes the iMesssage. However, if the message is yet to be sent to the recipient then you can enable airplane mode on your iPhone and this will prevent the message from going through.
How common is it to send a text to the wrong person?
It is quite rare sending a text message to wrong person unless you didn’t care to check the recipient you are sending the text message to.
However, if the number is not stored in your phone then you have to cross-check the number to see if the number you entered for the recipient is very correct and everything is correct before hitting on the send button.
It is not common sending a text message to wrong number on your cellphone unless you were too fast and never cared to check the recipient you selected before hitting on the send button.
Does deleting a text message unsend it iphone?
Deleting a text message doesn’t unsend it once it shows text message sent and delivered. Even if you go ahead to delete the sent text message from your cell phone, it won’t get deleted on the recipient phone.
On whatsapp, if you send a message to someone and which the recipient is yet to open the sent text message on it’s phone, you can delete the whatsapp message on your phone and also on the recipient phone.
This entails you tapping on delete for everyone and you are good to go.
However, this is not case if you are using the cellular network sms text message in sending a message on your phone. Once you hit on the send button, that’s the final cause you can never unsend the text message.
Can you unsend messages on imessage?
No, you cannot unsend a message on imessage. It doesn’t work like whatsapp where you can delete a sent message for everyone, once you have send a message on imessage, that’s the final.
However, you if the sent imessage is not yet delivered to the recipient, you can swiftly delete the imessage or turn off Wi-Fi or cellular data on your iPhone and this will prevent the message from being sent to the recipient.
But if the message shows delivered, then I’m sorry there is nothing you can do about it.
Maybe later in the future imessage will have a feature like whatsapp that provides the means to unsend a message even if the message has been delivered to the recipient.
Lastly if you make a mistake or send a text message to a wrong person, kindly send another message and apologize in a polite manner.
Conclusion
As you can’t unsend a sent text message, the best solution is to inform the wrong recipient that the text message was a mistake and he or she should kindly get rid of the text message. This is where I come to the conclusion of the question of the day, can you unsend a text.
