Why Do You Get The “Waiting for this message. This may take a while”, Message In WhatsApp?

A phone with WhatsApp Messenger opened

If you’ve been using WhatsApp for a while you’ve probably stumbled into this irritating error. The dreaded “Waiting for this message. This may take a while”, error is sometimes even more irritating because whoever sent you the message can then send you a follow-up text which you see just fine. But the one with the error. Good luck seeing that. So why does this error even occur, to begin with?


Encryption, encryption…

So WhatsApp basically uses end-to-end encryption and that’s mostly a good thing, however, when someone reinstalls their WhatsApp, their security code changes. The longer on of the chat participants stays offline the longer the error coninues but usually, the error disappears and the message is displayed. What happens if the error doesn’t go away and your FOMO (fear of missing out) insists that you need to see that message?

In that case, you can manually restore that message by following these steps;

  1. Backup your WhatsApp chats
  2. Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp.
  3. During reinstallation, restore backed up chats

Though this process is quite tedious and not worth it (if you ask me), it should restore that message that was taking a while.


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3 thoughts on “Why Do You Get The “Waiting for this message. This may take a while”, Message In WhatsApp?

    1. Interesting indeed. People must not look for you when you are offline or the people you talk to are always online hahaha

  1. Is this an error? I think(and I could be wrong) that it’s got something to do with handshakes, which – I believe – can only be performed when both users are online

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