Twitter appears to be testing a new feature that will allow users to undo the sending of a tweet. The feature will afford you a few seconds to backtrack after hitting Send, which could prevent cases like unfortunate typos, misinformation or just plain controversial takes.
The unconfirmed feature was spotted by tipster Jane Manchun Wong, who tweeted a GIF showing how it will potentially work. As shown in the tweet below, the user is given roughly five seconds to choose to undo the sent tweet, thus stopping it from going out before it’s ever published.
Twitter is working on “Undo Send” timer for tweets pic.twitter.com/nS0kuijPK0March 5, 2021
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There’s a glaring issue with the Undo Tweet feature, though - you can’t actually see your tweet when prompted to undo. As such, you may not even spot your mistakes until the pop-up window has cleared and you see the published tweet.
Tweeting grounds
When you think about it, Twitter’s apparent Undo Tweet test feature really is just one step away from outright giving us an Edit option, something users have wanted for years. That begs the question, then, why would Twitter instead test a feature where we can’t even see the mistakes we’d want to undo?
Twitter users have been clamoring for an Edit button for a long time, especially given the platform’s short, quickfire approach to posting. Being able to undo tweets is a step in the right direction, but as mentioned, the currently tested feature is far from perfect.
If Twitter could at least make a preview of your tweet visible along with the undo option, along with a slightly longer time limit, that would definitely go some ways to making this feature actually usable for a wider audience.
Do keep in mind that this undo function doesn't protect you from tweets you've already posted. It's more of an "are you sure about this?" kind of feature in case you just want to double check after you initially hit send. If you've already published the tweet, though, the old delete option would still be your go-to.
Until then, if this feature does indeed roll out to Twitter’s user base at large, we’ll at least be prompted to second-guess ourselves before tweeting out anything potentially embarrassing.
