Twitter might be working on a new ‘Undo’ feature for tweets

The popular microblogging site might soon allow you to reconsider a tweet typed in the head of the moment, or eliminate a spelling or grammatical mistake.

The Twitter application is seen on a phone screen. (REUTERS)

Twitter has a lot of new features in the works for 2021 and quite a few new features have either leaked or been officially released in beta form - like the new ‘Spaces' feature that beat rival app Clubhouse to the Android platform. It now appears that the microblogging site is working on a useful Undo Send timer for tweets, a feature we reported last year.

Twitter is working on “Undo Send” timer for tweets pic.twitter.com/nS0kuijPK0

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 5, 2021

Spotted by noted leaker Jane Manchun Wong, who is known for her feature discoveries in popular apps like Snapchat, Facebook, Skype, Messenger and Twitter, the feature looks like it will allow users to un-send a tweet for a brief period of time after it is posted. 

This essentially means users can get rid of a tweet with a spelling error or repeated word, which are common with the fast-paced nature of the platform and during live events where speed is of the essence.

Wong took to Twitter to reveal a screen recording of the feature which shows a popup message that says “Your tweet was sent!” above a blue button titled “Undo” that is animated to show the time left before it disappears. Users quickly responded with some witty replies to Wong's tweet. 

It looks like Twitter users will have a brief window in which they can “cancel” the sending of their tweet before it is posted. At a first glance, it looks like users will have a five-second window to stop the tweet from being posted.

While this is not the edit tweet feature several users have been asking for many years, it is certainly better than users posting a tweet with a typo only to have to delete it a short while later. The feature works in the same way Gmail allows users to undo sending an email for a short period after you hit the send button. However, it remains to be seen whether Twitter allows users to configure the “undo send” time - on Gmail you can set it between five seconds and 30 seconds.