If I Delete A Text Will It Delete On The Other Person’s Phone?

If you want to delete a text message from your phone, it is a simple process, but deleting it from someone else’s phone isn’t. We’ve all been in that conundrum before, haven’t we? We’ve sent someone a text message that we later regretted or sent a message to the wrong person altogether. Knowing what we can and can’t delete from our phones and other devices is helpful in these situations, but there are limits to what can be deleted and what can’t.

Table of Contents

• If I Delete A Text, Will It Delete On The Other Person’s Phone?
• Deleting A Sent Text
  • 1. Ask the Recipient to Delete the Text Themselves or Text It Back to You
  • 2. Download a Text Management App on Your Phone to Prevent This in the Future
  • 3. Learn Some Common Sense Techniques to Prevent This From Happening Again
• More Resources About Text Messages
• My iPhone Doesn’t Receive Verification Texts (Solution!)
• 3 Reasons Why Your Phone Won’t Send Pictures Through Text
• 6 Reasons Your iPhone Is Not Making Sound When You Get A Text

If I Delete A Text, Will It Delete On The Other Person’s Phone?

Deleting a text on your phone will not delete it from someone else’s, but you can ask the recipient to delete it themselves (or send it back to you), download a text management app to prevent this in the future, and learn some common sense techniques to prevent this from happening again.

Texting is a great tool for fast communication, but it can also be at times. Deleting a text message off your phone is pretty straightforward, and you can usually even retrieve texts that you’ve deleted from your phone, whether you were the one who sent or received them. 

But what happens on the other person’s phone is out of your control once a message has been sent, and the chances of it automatically deleting it when you deleted it on your end is pretty near impossible. 

Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with texting. I use it often and appreciate the convenience it brings to my life when I need to ask a family member or friend a quick question or need to convey some information that is easier to write in a text than in an email or even in a phone call. But I have also found texting to sometimes be impersonal, and messages are sometimes misunderstood. 

Worse, sending someone a text you didn’t mean to send them is embarrassing and possibly damaging to a relationship. Unfortunately, we can’t delete a message off someone else’s phone, but I can show you how to retrieve messages that you have deleted off of yours.

Deleting A Sent Text

Text messaging became a part of our lives thirty years ago, and has exploded in popularity since then. And, despite some of its limitations, it’s easy to see why.

Texting is a communication tool that involves writing short messages to another person or group. 

Similar to emails, texting is a great way to stay in touch with family and friends, convey information to a business associate, or just send cute cat videos to your kid who is away at college. 

Most cell phone companies offer texting plans to their customers that either involve paying a fee for each message or providing unlimited texting if you are willing to pay for it. 

Texting can involve words, emojis, photos, videos, and even voice messages. It’s truly revolutionized the way humans stay in touch with each other.

But texting has its downsides too. Many claims that this mode of communication is too impersonal and that it has taken the place of actual conversations between humans.

Others worry that a lot of information gets lost in translation and that texting is an inappropriate form of conveying your emotions to others because – without facial contact – it’s difficult to know what a person really means when they write out a text message.

Then, there is the problem of text messages getting sent when they shouldn’t have. Almost everyone has, at one time or another, sent a text message to someone and later realized they said something inappropriate in the message, they changed their mind about something, or they just simply sent the message to the wrong person. 

When any of this happens, our first thought is to erase the message, hoping it will disappear and not be acknowledged. 

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Each time you send a text message, it is no longer in your possession. It’s like sending a piece of mail and wishing you could get it back. 

Once the text message is gone from your phone, it is no longer in your control.

So…what to do when you’ve deleted a text on your phone that you would like to delete on someone else’s? Not much – but here are a few texting hints that might help.

1. Ask the Recipient to Delete the Text Themselves or Text It Back to You

One obvious solution if you find you have sent a text to someone that you would prefer they delete you could ask them to do it themselves.

Not everyone will have the thoughtfulness to do this. But if your situation is one that the recipient can grasp and sympathize with why you would like that text message deleted, hopefully, they are the kind of friend, colleague, or family member that will agree to your wishes.

Sometimes you may have deleted a text message on your phone that you didn’t want to delete, and you will be happy that it didn’t delete on the other person’s phone.

Maybe it was your favorite picture of your dog or a photo of a family member who is no longer with you. 

In this case, you will be thrilled that the text you deleted is still on someone else’s phone, and they can now send it back to you.

2. Download a Text Management App on Your Phone to Prevent This in the Future

For anyone who has made the mistake of deleting a text that they didn’t want to, or wishing they could retrieve a text they sent, there are some great text management apps on the market that are ideal for this exact situation.  Q 

These apps will allow you to flag certain contacts so that if you write them a text, you have to go through extra steps before you can send it, thus preventing you from sending something inappropriate to your boss or mother-in-law.

There are even text management apps that can destroy an already-sent text from the server, allowing you to control a message that has already been sent. 

These types of apps are not always foolproof, and won’t work with certain networks.

But, at the very least, a text management app will make it harder for you to press “Send” without some safety measures in place.

3. Learn Some Common Sense Techniques to Prevent This From Happening Again

Finally, this one may seem to go without saying, but I think it’s worth sometimes repeating for all of us.

Texting is a form of communication that is easy, fast, and effective.

It also means that human error can sometimes happen to even the most prudent people and cause embarrassment or, worse, actual harm.

Remember to keep some basic things in mind when you are texting.

Driving and texting is always a bad idea. Every state now has laws against it, and most have even enacted laws against hands-free texting.

Another big one is to try and not text when you’re tired, under the influence of anything, or don’t have on your normal eyewear.

All of these things make it hard to see a screen and make it easy to mistake one contact’s name for another.

And finally, it’s good to get in the habit of rereading a text before you send it. Especially at times when your emotions are heated or you’re upset about something – taking a minute (or more) and rereading a text before you press send is never a bad idea.