Apple’s latest iOS 16 beta ensures you can’t hide your mistakes with an edit

Apple has added an edit history to iOS 16’s new iMessage editing feature in the latest developer beta released on Wednesday (via 9to5Mac). You’ll be able to check the edit history by tapping on the “Edited” text that sits below an edited message, and when you do, all of the edits will appear above the latest one. You’re also now only allowed to make five edits to an individual message.

You can get an idea of what the new edit history looks like in this screenshot from a message I sent to Mitchell Clark and then edited as many times as I could:

And if you happen to have the edit history of a friend’s message unfurled, any additional edits they make will appear as the primary one. In the below example, I watched Mitchell’s “No worries!” change to a lighter gray when he edited it to say “Okay I’m just editing this away.”

The edit history addresses a major omission from Apple’s original implementation of iMessage editing. Without a history, the edit feature could theoretically be used to change malicious or mean messages after they were sent, like what Mitchell did as a joke in the screenshot above. While Apple’s tiny “Edited” note would tell you something had changed, you wouldn’t be able to see what was originally said.

Apple has also adjusted the length of time you’ll have to unsend a message from 15 minutes to just two. And beginning Wednesday, developers can now test out the Live Activities API so they can make the new widget-like lock screen notifications. Live Activities won’t be available in the initial public version of iOS 16 that launches sometime this fall, but Apple says they’ll be coming in an update “later this year.”