Having studied the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.19.275 carefully, the folk at WABetaInfo report that a "disappearing messages" feature is being currently being developed and tested by Facebook.

Axar.az reports citing Forbes that disappearing messages will be the WhatsApp version of self-destructing messages that are already available to users of rival messaging apps such as iMessage, Pushfor, Signal, Telegram, and Wickr. Heck, it's the whole point of the hugely popular Snapchat messaging app, so Facebook is very late to the self-destructing message party with this WhatsApp feature it has to be said.

When will disappearing messages appear in WhatsApp?

Don't get too excited just yet. As already mentioned, the WhatsApp disappearing messages feature is currently in the early, alpha, stages of development and testing. At present, there is no indication of when this will turn into a working function in the WhatsApp beta app. It is equally unknown whether the self-destructing feature will be available for private chats as well as group ones.