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Why Do My Telegram Messages Keep Disappearing?

Quick Tips
  • The other person might be deleting your messages.
  • Your contact has deleted the entire conversation.
  • Telegram allows you to clear history automatically in the app. You can also set a timer and remove chat from another side after a certain time.

Your Contact Is Deleting Your Messages

On WhatsApp, you have a certain time window to delete messages from both sides. Even when you try to remove messages from both sides, the receiving person will indicate that the message is deleted.

There are no such limits on Telegram. You can go back to a two-month-old message and delete it for your convenience. Long-press on a message and tap on the delete icon. Delete for both users, and you are good to go.

The troubling part is that you don’t see any trace that the message was deleted. It gets deleted without any indication.

Your Contact Is Deleting Entire Conversation

Telegram allows users to delete an entire conversation as well. If the other person uses this trick, you won’t see any chat thread in the Telegram app.

On Android

Long-press on a conversation > tap on the delete icon at the top > enable Also delete for another person > tap on Delete Chat.

On iPhone

Swipe left on a chat thread > tap on Delete > select Delete for me and the other person.

Once again, you will have no idea when the other person has deleted the chat. It disappears from Telegram.

Clear History Automatically

This is one of the prime reasons your Telegram messages are disappearing. Telegram offers an option to clear history automatically in the app. You can also set a timer and remove chat from the other side after a certain time.

Here’s how to set it up so that you can understand the reason behind deleted messages.

On Mobile

Step 1: Open Telegram on your phone.

Step 2: Open any chat > tap on the three-dot menu at the top.

Step 3: Select Clear History, and it will open a bottom menu for more customization.

Step 4: Enable Also clear history for another person.

Step 5: Select auto-delete messages timeframe in the app.

You can set Telegram messages to get auto-deleted from 24 hours to 1 month.

On Desktop

Step 1: Launch Telegram on Mac or Windows > click on any chat.

Step 2: Select the three-dot menu at the top > open Clear Chat History.

Clear chat history on telegram mac

Step 3: Select the timeframe > click on clear chat history.

Step 4: Enable the option to clear chat history for the other person as well.

Delete for other person

Now, imagine a scenario where the other user has enabled a clear chat history for 24 hours or 1 week. In that case, Telegram messages will disappear automatically in the app.

Using Telegram Secret Chat

Are you using a secret chat in Telegram to communicate with others? In a Secret Chat, the messages self-destruct in a matter of seconds. It’s mostly useful for private or confidential information.

When you start talking with someone over a secret chat in Telegram, you can set a self-destruct timer. From that, you can set a timer of maybe 5 to 7 seconds, and all the messages will auto-delete after the set time.

You will see a small pop-up saying the time duration, after which the message disappears in the app.

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Last updated on 27 August, 2024

4 Comments

  1. Both my wife and I lost all our correspondence for the past 3.5 years (except for the very first message and the very last one). Neither of us had clicked on any of the above-mentioned buttons in order to clear history. Whom do we contact at Telegram in order to have this glitch thoroughly investigated? Is our suddenly lost correspondence still kept on some backup server?

    I’m planning to post on LinkedIn about this inexplicable occurrence — perhaps someone else went through this and knows the answer.

  2. Dear Marks Lisnanskis,

    I recently had the same issue with my girlfriend. Did you got any feedback from somebody at telegram yet?

  3. Hello, i just experienced the same issue mentionned above, chat history with my husband all deleted for both, telegram support didn t reply to me.

  4. I think I finally found a fix! I’ve been struggling with this issue of our messages deleting since starting using Telegram.

    Try deleting all your profile pictures (both yours and the person you’re communicating with) – so that only your initials show. This miraculously worked for us – our conversations are now staying and are not deleting. Not sure if it’s a cache issue, a memory issue or what but delete all images you uploaded to your profile on Telegram and give it a try! Good luck everyone!

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