Some messages aren’t supposed to last forever. There are some Telegram groups and conversations where it’s best if messages are automatically deleted in a day or a week. Here’s how to auto-delete messages in any Telegram chat. You can enable the auto-delete feature on a per-chat basis. It works for both one-on-one conversations and group chats. Previously, you needed to use the Secret Chat feature to automatically delete messages after a set time. At the time of writing, you can choose to automatically delete messages after a day or a week. Telegram starts the timer once they are sent, not after they are read. This won’t affect the messages that were sent before enabling the feature.
Mr. Durov launched Telegram in late 2013 with his brother, Nikolai, just months before he was pushed out of VK, the Russian social-media platform he founded. Mr. Durov pitched his new app—funded with the proceeds from the VK sale—less as a business than as a way for people to send messages while avoiding government surveillance and censorship.
