You Can Edit or Unsend an iMessage Up to 15 Minutes After Sending in iOS 16

iOS 16 adds a long-awaited feature set allowing you to edit and unsend iMessages that you've sent to someone, but as it turns out, there is a time limitation.

You can edit or unsend an iMessage up to 15 minutes after it's been sent, but after that, it is uneditable and can no longer be unsent.

Unsending an iMessage or editing an iMessage requires both Messages users to be running iOS 16. If you try unsending an iMessage to someone running iOS 15 or earlier, it does not work, nor does the editing feature.

Apple warns that people running earlier versions of iOS are able to see messages that have been unsent, even if it is no longer visible on your end.

You can edit or undo an iMessage by long pressing on it in an iMessage conversation and tapping on either "Edit" or "Undo Send." Note that these features are limited to blue bubble iMessages and do not work with green SMS messages.

There's also a new option to recover recently deleted messages, and deleted messages can be recovered for up to 30 days after deleting them. Deleted messages are located in the Recently Deleted section under the Filters list. Recently deleted works for both iMessage and SMS messages.

In addition to these two features, there is a "Mark as Unread" option for when you want to respond to a message at a later time but don't want to forget, and all of your unread messages can be seen in the new "Unread Messages" folder under Filters.