Some conversations don’t need to live forever in your chat history — a one-time password, a quick rant, a private photo. Self-destructing messages handle that for you.
When disappearing messages help
- Sharing temporary credentials or one-time codes.
- Sending sensitive photos that shouldn’t linger on either device.
- Casual conversations you don’t want piling up in your inbox.
- Reducing the amount of personal context on a lost or stolen phone.
When they don’t
They don’t stop the other side from taking a screenshot, photographing the screen, or copying the text. Treat them as “reduce exposure”, not “guarantee secrecy”.
How to enable them in VibTribe
- Open a chat.
- Tap the chat header, then Privacy → Disappearing messages.
- Pick a timer: 1 hour, 24 hours, or 7 days.
- New messages in that chat will vanish automatically.
A complementary trick: the private vault
For chats you’d rather hide entirely instead of timing-out, move them to the VibTribe private vault. They disappear from your main inbox and are locked behind a separate PIN.