Apple allows you to edit iMessages in the Messages app on iOS 16 and later, but all chat participants can see any changes between the final and original text. Luckily, there is a simple workaround to prevent this from happening when you want them to only see the last message and nothing else.
You can edit any iMessage you’ve sent in a single or group chat, as long as the 15-minute time limit hasn’t passed and you haven’t already made five edits to the same message. When you do it this way, everyone in the conversation can quickly see all the changes you’ve made through the change history.
There is one thing you can do to avoid leaving traces of edits that everyone can see, and this is only possible if all participants in the conversation have updated all their devices connected to iCloud to at least iOS 16.0, iPadOS 16.1 and/or macOS 13.0 Ventura. If they have a device with an older operating system, they will still be able to see what you originally wrote before any changes, so keep that in mind.
So what’s the trick? It’s very simple, and you’ll probably kick yourself if you haven’t thought of it yet: just delete the original message and send a new one.
That’s all. However, you don’t have as much time to delete an iMessage as you do to edit it. While you have up to 15 minutes to change iMessage up to five times, you only have up to two minutes to delete it. But once you do, it will disappear from their end of chat and their notifications.
However, it is always possible that they have already seen the message. You can get some relief if they have read receipts turned on and your “Delivered”alert won’t change to “Read”but it won’t show as read if they take a look at the message in the notification. Only when they interact with the notification does it trigger messages to send a read receipt. (Check out the GIF below to see what I mean.)
So is deleting a sent iMessage and sending a new one the ideal solution? No, but it’s as close to Apple’s rules as possible.
Note that you can use the same trick to chat with an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, but iPadOS 16.1 and macOS 13.0 Ventura are still in beta. This makes it less likely that you’ll be able to make changes without history – at least until those software updates are released to everyone after the beta is over.