Twitter has confirmed it is working on an ‘Undo Send’ feature that will give users a chance to cancel their tweets if they have second thoughts.
The feature leaked online in the form of an animation, showing a blue timer with the word ‘Undo’ that counts down after a user has posted a tweet.
Twitter users will have just five seconds to tap the timer before the tweet is made public.
Some Twitter users pointed out that it would just mean there would be a frustrating five-second delay before their tweets actually appear.
Twitter has confirmed to MailOnline that it is currently ‘testing’ Undo Send, but declined to provide any further details.
It’s not known when the nifty new feature will be rolling out, or if it will come to Twitter for both desktop or mobile.
But it would be sure to reduce some of the most vociferous verbal abuse on the platform by giving users a chance to think twice before they post.
Twitter still isn’t yielding to user demands to implement an edit button, however – its most-requested feature.
The blue bar is a timer that runs out after five seconds. App researcher and tipster Jane Manchun Wong posted the animation of the leaked feature to her Twitter account
In a statement to MailOnline, a Twitter spokesperson said: ‘We can confirm we are testing this feature.’
App researcher and tipster Jane Manchun Wong posted the animation of the leaked feature to her Twitter account.
It shows her composing a tweet as normal and pressing the big blue ‘Tweet’ button.
The little box then appears with the words ‘Your tweet was sent’. This little box already appears when users post a tweet, but the countdown timer is new.
If users press undo, it’s not known whether the tweet gets saved it drafts so it can be edited later.
Undo Send seemed to divide Twitter users – @MasonRaeken said: ‘I just want the edit button like every other platform.’
‘I don’t want a dumb undo tweet notification every time I tweet … that’s not solving anything and becomes a nuisance.’
Another user, @jooroth18, called it ‘the next best thing to an edit button’.
Undo Send could reduce verbal abuse on the platform by giving users a chance to think twice
Wong, who regularly lists new features for apps including Instagram, Uber and Spotify, said it was ‘a good compromise’ for an edit button.
Although Twitter confirmed the Undo Send feature, it declined to comment to MailOnline today regarding when exactly an edit button may arrive.
One of the potential problems with letting users edit their tweets is the possibility that they could completely change the content of their post once it’s been heavily endorsed by millions of likes and retweets.
This could lead to unimaginable confusion and misinformation, which is something social media platforms strive to avoid in the era of fake news.
When asked in January last year if the edit button would be introduced in 2020, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey simply replied: ‘The answer is no’.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured) doesn’t seem to be yielding to user demands to introduce an edit button for tweets
In an interview with Wired, Dorsey said at the time: The reason there’s no edit button [and] there hasn’t been an edit button traditionally is we started as an SMS text messaging service.
‘So as you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back. We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling in the early days.’
Interestingly, Dorsey said Twitter toyed with introducing a short delay between when a user clicks send on a tweet and when it is actually posted – which is essentially what Undo Send is.
Despite the fact Undo Send has been confirmed by Twitter today, Dorsey said at the time that his company would ‘probably never do it’.
In 2018, Dorsey suggested that if the button would be added, it would most likely be designed to correct spelling errors.
Twitter’s official account wryly acknowledged the huge user demand for an edit button in July last year when it tweeted ‘You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask’ in a reference to the current pandemic.
Last year, the platform also launched a feature called Fleets for Android and iOS that allows users to make tweets disappear after 24 hours, just like Instagram Stories.
Fleets from accounts a person follows will appear along the top of their timeline, much like Stories along the top of Instagram’s landing page.
Fleets – a portmanteau of ‘fleeting’ and ‘tweet’ – cannot be retweeted or receive public responses, but instead must be interacted with through Direct Messages.
Twitter knows the edit button is the most requested feature online. In a tweet, the social media site said last year: ‘You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask’