How To: Take Back the Photos & Videos You Send via Instagram Direct

It seems that Facebook doesn't take rejection lightly. After being denied for a $3 billion buyout of Snapchat, Facebook-owned Instagram has updated their popular photo-sharing service with Instagram Direct—a new feature that allows users to send private photos/videos.

While the Instagram Direct feature is a bit underwhelming, it has a feature that might not be so obvious—temporary messaging—a feature that Snapchat thrives on. If a user deletes any pictures or videos that they've sent, they will also be deleted from the recipient's inbox.

If, for example, I send a picture to my friend and I notice that he has just viewed it, I can delete it from my Instagram and thus he will no longer be able to view it—it'll simply vanish.

Once I delete the picture, it disappears from the recipient's Instagram Direct feed—even if they haven't seen it yet—as you can see in the screenshots below of the account I sent the photo above to.

To delete images, just use the menu on the image page, or swipe it from the Direct feed and hit the delete button. It's that easy.

I tested out the feature with both an Android and Apple device and it works extremely fast, since the image resides on Instagram's servers. In a side-by-side comparison, the deletion process is almost instantaneous.