FAQ

✔️ 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 several ways to program the automatic deletion of messages, depending on your needs:

  • Ephemeral messages whose settings are shared with all recipients and therefore affect the existence of these messages on their devices.

  • Message retention policies whose settings are local (specific to your device) and in no way affect the existence of messages on your correspondents’ or other devices.

    The aim is not to limit the lifespan of a message, but only to “clean up” the content of your device on a regular basis.

  • Messages deleted automatically can never be recovered.

Shared ephemeral message settings

An ephemeral message is a message that the sender decides to limit its visibility or existence lifetime at the time of sending.

You can change your shared ephemeral messages settings for each message, or for a discussion or for all your discussions.

Olvid offers 3 different settings for ephemeral messages, which can be combined:

Read once

The message can only be displayed once. It is deleted as soon as you leave the discussion view.

Visibility duration

The message can only be displayed for a certain period of time. Once displayed, a countdown timer is started, after which the message is deleted.

Existence duration

The message, whether read or not, is deleted a certain time after it is sent.

Read more about ephemeral messages.

Message retention policy (local settings)

The settings below allow you to automatically delete old messages in this discussion on this device only. They have priority over your default retention policy.

# Count based retention policy

Old messages in this discussion will be deleted regularly so that the maximum number of messages here remains below the limit you specify.

  • Default: leave blank to use your default policy (keep all messages).

  • Enter the number of messages to keep in this discussion.

  • Unread messages are never deleted.

Time based retention policy

Messages older than the specified duration will be automatically deleted from this discussion on this device only.

  • Default: Keep all messages.

  • Select: Unlimited, 6 hours, 12 hours, 1-2-7-15-30-90-180 days, 1-3-5 years.