Messaging app Signal has added the ability to set disappearing messages as the default option.

As the company points out in a blog post, one of the side effects in the shift to digital communication is the permanence of that communication. Signal wants to give users more control by providing the ability to set the app to send disappearing messages by default.

Disappearing messages provide a way to keep your message history tidy. When enabled for a conversation, messages will be deleted for the sender and recipients after the specified time. This is not for situations where your contact is your adversary — after all, if someone who receives a disappearing message really wants a record of it, they can always use another camera to take a photo of the screen before the message disappears. However, this is a nice way to automatically save storage space on your devices and limit the amount of conversation history that remains on your device if you should find yourself physically separated from it.

The feature is sure to be a useful one in one of the most secure communications platforms in existence. Now if only we could have a client that natively supports Apple’s custom silicon.