Telegram lets you delete a message for everybody, with no time limit and no marker left behind. In a one-to-one chat either person can do it, to either person's messages, at any point in the conversation's history.
That is unusually permissive, and it means the important part of this page is not how to delete but what deletion does and does not reach.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Delete one message, several, or an entire history, for both sides.
- check_circle Tell deleting for yourself apart from deleting for everyone.
- check_circle Know exactly what a deletion cannot undo.
- check_circle Choose between deleting and the other options when something has gone wrong.
The list closes over the gap — there is no placeholder saying a message was removed.
delete Two deletions with the same name
Deleting a message always offers a choice. Delete for me removes it from your copy of the conversation and leaves the other person's untouched. Delete for everyone removes it from theirs as well, and from the servers.
There is no deadline on the second one, and no tombstone afterwards: the conversation simply no longer contains that message, for anybody. In a private chat the permission is symmetrical — you can delete something the other person sent, and they can delete something you sent.
The same menu offers clearing the entire history, also for both sides. That is the largest button in the app that nobody warns you about, and it is exactly as complete as it sounds.
What a deletion does not reach
The mechanism is thorough within Telegram. Four places it has no authority at all.
notifications_active The alert that already arrived
share Forwards, downloads, screenshots
person The person who read it
edit The alternatives
Complete inside Telegram, powerless outside it: delete to remove the record, not to undo the event.
settings Deleting
- Hold the message Then choose Delete.
- Read the checkbox Also delete for the other person. It is not ticked for you; this is the decision.
- For several at once Hold one, tap the others, then delete the selection.
- For an entire conversation The chat's menu offers Clear History, with the same choice about the other side.
- Act quickly if it is about a notification The alert is the part you are racing.
This page is deleting after the fact. The curriculum step is deciding in advance: auto-delete timers on a chat, how they differ from a Secret Chat's, and what "gone" means at each level.
At a glance
- 1Delete for everyone
Tick Also delete for the other person when deleting.
- 2What it cannot undo
Notifications, saved copies and screenshots stay.
- 3Better options
Edit a typo; delete what should never have been sent.
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