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ℹ️ Message info (sent, received, read and when)

✔️ Enable automatic message deletion

Olvid has been designed to exchange potentially sensitive data in a secure manner. It is therefore natural, in certain situations, to want to limit the lifetime of this data.

Olvid offers two ways to program the automatic deletion of messages:

	Ephemeral messages	Message retention policy
Purpose	Limit the lifetime of a message	Regularly “clean up” your device
Messages deleted	On the devices of all participants	On your device only
Settings	Shared with the discussion participants	Local, never shared

These settings are defined for all discussions or per discussion.

Automatically deleted messages can never be recovered.

Shared ephemeral message settings

The sender limits the visibility or the existence duration of their messages. Three settings, which can be combined:

Read once: the message can only be displayed once.
Visibility duration: the message is deleted a certain time after being read.
Existence duration: the message is deleted a certain time after being sent, whether read or not.

Message retention policy (local settings)

Old messages are automatically deleted on your device only. Messages on your correspondents’ devices and on your other devices are not affected.

You set a default policy for all your discussions, which a discussion’s own setting can override. By default, all messages are kept.

# Count based retention policy

Old messages in the discussion are deleted regularly so that the number of messages stays below the limit you specify.

Leave blank to keep all messages (or, in a discussion, to use your default policy).
Unread messages are never deleted.

Time based retention policy

Messages older than the selected duration are automatically deleted.

Choices: Unlimited, 6 hours, 12 hours, 1, 2, 7, 15, 30, 90 or 180 days, 1, 3 or 5 years.