We now announce a new feature for some beta testers: the ability to keep messages from disappearing. Thanks to this feature, it is possible to prevent certain messages from disappearing, and it’s useful in case you send an important message and you don’t want to lose it. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of users were unable to keep messages from disappearing even if the section was visible within chat info as the keep action was missing, as announced in the article about the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.8.3 update. Finally, thanks to the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS 23.7.0.72 update, some beta testers may be able to get this feature:

Thanks to the new update, you can prevent a disappearing message from disappearing by selecting the “keep” action, and everyone can keep a message from disappearing, even yours. If someone wants to make a disappearing message disappear again, they need to choose the “unkeep” action, and the message will vanish. As people are still in control over their disappearing messages, it won’t be possible to keep a message from disappearing in case it has already been unkept.
In our opinion, there may be situations where people in the conversation may not want a disappearing message to disappear, such as for future reference. In such cases, the ability to keep the message from disappearing provides a sense of control over the communication, allowing everyone to access and review the message at their convenience within the section “Kept Messages”.