Another feature inspired by Snapchat has made its way to the Facebook family of applications, as vanish mode was introduced on Messenger From Facebook Thursday in the U.S. and a handful of other countries, with Instagram to follow soon.
Activating vanish mode—which is done by swiping up in an existing chat thread on mobile devices—means messages will disappear automatically after they have been seen and people leave the chat.
Swiping up a second time returns the chat to normal messaging mode.
Only people who users are connected to can use vanish mode, and it is opt-in, so users can decide whether to entire it.
People will be notified if someone takes a screenshot of the chat while it is in vanish mode and, as always, other users can be blocked and reported.
Instagram users will have to upgrade to the app’s new Messenger experience in order to use vanish mode.
Messenger product manager Bridget Pujals and Instagram product manager Manik Singh wrote in a blog post, “Sometimes a message is just spontaneous—something you want to say in the moment without worrying about it sticking around.”
