LINE to Put Message Editing and Silent Messages Behind NT$165 Monthly Subscription in Taiwan

Two free trials are ending within weeks

LINE will end free access to message editing in Taiwan on October 20, 2026, and move silent messages into its paid subscription in early November. Keeping both features will require LINE Premium, which costs NT$165 a month. The changes follow the company's October 13 announcements at LINE CONVERGE 2026.

Message editing lets users change text within 15 minutes of sending it, including in individual and group chats. Silent messages let a sender deliver a message without triggering the recipient's notification sound, popup alert or push notification. Both have been available for free through LINE Labs, the app's testing area for experimental features.

The immediate change is practical: people who do not subscribe will lose the option to correct a sent message in place or choose silent delivery. They can still send a correction or use the standard Unsend function within its time limit. In Taiwan, that limit is one hour, according to LINE's Help Center.

LINE also announced four other Premium features: call recording, scheduled messages, discreet previews and the ability to decide when a message is marked as read. Together with editing and silent messages, they form a package of six features scheduled to become available between the fourth quarter of 2026 and the first half of 2027.

What changes on October 20?

Message editing arrived in LINE Labs in August 2026. It allows a sender to fix a typo, change an incorrect time or clarify wording without removing the message and sending a replacement. The editing window lasts 15 minutes from the original sending time.

LINE says the free trial ends on October 20, when the feature will be removed from the LINE Labs settings screen and become a Premium benefit. Subscribers will need LINE version 26.14.0 or later on smartphones and tablets, or version 26.5.0 or later on computers.

A subscription therefore buys the editing option, while the app version determines whether the device can use it. Paying without installing a supported version may leave a user unable to access the feature.

For someone who sends the wrong meeting time, the choices will depend on membership and timing. A Premium subscriber can edit the text during the first 15 minutes. A user without Premium can send another message with the correct time or remove the original with Unsend during the first hour, leaving a notice in the conversation.

Silent delivery follows in early November

Silent messages are expected to leave LINE Labs and become exclusive to Premium in early November 2026. LINE has not announced the exact switching date or individual launch dates for the four other planned features.

LINE describes silent messaging as having completed its current testing phase. Users who want to keep it will need both a Premium subscription and LINE version 26.17.0 or later. Japan had already moved the feature into its paid membership service by the end of August 2026.

During the free trial, users can enable silent messages by opening Home, entering Settings and selecting LINE Labs. In a chat, holding down the send button then brings up normal and silent delivery options.

Silent delivery sends the message without the usual alerts on the recipient's phone. Its usefulness is straightforward when someone wants to leave a reminder late at night or send information while another person is resting. After the change, free users will lose that control over how an individual outgoing message alerts its recipient.

The dates users need to track

LINE Premium launched in Taiwan in March 2026. The October announcement expands the subscription beyond its earlier benefits, including advanced backups and discreet message removal.

The sequence matters because the editing deadline, silent messaging change and wider feature rollout happen at different times:

• March 2026: LINE Premium launches in Taiwan.
• August 2026: Message editing becomes available for free testing through LINE Labs.
• October 13, 2026: LINE announces six Premium features at LINE CONVERGE 2026.
• October 20, 2026: Free message editing ends and becomes exclusive to Premium.
• Early November 2026: Silent messages are expected to become exclusive to Premium.
• Fourth quarter of 2026 through the first half of 2027: LINE plans to introduce the wider package in stages.

Editing, unsending and deleting work differently

LINE's Unsend and Delete guide gives the clearest explanation of what users can do when they want to remove a message. Unsend removes content the user sent from both the sender's chat and the recipients' chats. Delete removes content only from the screen of the device where the action is taken.

Taiwan users without Premium have one hour to unsend a message. The conversation then displays a notice saying that the sender unsent it. Premium members have up to seven days, or 168 hours, to use Unsend. That gives them an unsending window 168 times as long as the standard one.

Editing serves a different purpose: it changes the text while keeping the message in the conversation. Unsending removes the message. Deleting clears it from the user's own view, leaving it visible to recipients.

LINE warns that deleting content cannot be undone and that a user cannot then unsend the deleted content from that chat view. For anyone trying to remove something from a recipient's conversation, choosing Unsend rather than Delete is the crucial step.

The one hour standard applies in Taiwan, Japan and Thailand. LINE's Help Center lists a 24 hour standard for users outside those markets. OpenChat has its own rule: messages can be unsent within 24 hours regardless of Premium membership.

Discreet removal has conditions

Premium's discreet Unsend option allows an unread message to be removed without leaving the usual notice. Once the recipient has read the message, that option is unavailable. It also requires a supported version of LINE on the recipient's device.

LINE's Help Center, which publishes the service's instructions and restrictions, warns that recipients may see content before it is removed:

Even if you unsend a message, the recipient may have already seen part of it in an OS push notification or message preview before it was unsent.

A phone's operating system can display a message preview outside the chat itself. A recipient may therefore see some words in a notification before opening LINE and marking the message as read.

LINE also says device conditions can affect the result. If a sender uses several devices, the version installed on the device used to unsend the message can determine whether a notice appears. The company advises using the latest version.

The Help Center lists restrictions on Premium Unsend benefits in existing chats with multiple people, official account chats, OpenChats and chats using bots. It also says membership benefits end when the subscription is cancelled. Users should check the rules for the particular chat rather than expect every removal option to work everywhere.

Four more features focus on timing and records

Scheduled messages will let users write a message in advance, choose a date and time, and have LINE send it automatically. The announced uses include birthday greetings, work reminders, family tasks and communication across time zones.

Call recording will support saving voice and video conversations as files. For users who need to check an instruction or revisit a discussion, that would add a record they can consult after the call.

Discreet preview will allow users to view full messages without triggering the read label. LINE has described a preview window opened by holding down a chat, with the ability to scroll through conversation history while keeping it unread.

The fourth feature, marking messages as read later, will let users choose when the other person sees the read status. A read receipt is the signal in a conversation showing that a message has been opened. Controlling that signal gives users more room to read before deciding when to reply.

These additions address different stages of a conversation: preparing a message, delivering it, reading it and keeping a record. Two of the six announced features are already familiar to free trial users, while the other four expand the subscription's functions.

The free iPhone preview will remain

LINE has clarified that the planned paid preview differs from the preview already available through Apple's Haptic Touch feature on iOS. The existing iPhone option will remain available after the Premium version arrives.

Holding down a chat in the iPhone chat list opens a limited preview of the latest three to five lines. Users cannot scroll up and down through the conversation in that window.

The Premium preview is intended to show complete messages and let users scroll through the chat history without changing the unread status. The practical difference is how much of the conversation a person can inspect before opening it normally.

For iPhone users who only need a quick look at the latest lines, the existing free preview will continue to serve that purpose. Someone wanting to read a longer message or review earlier exchanges within the preview would need the broader Premium function.

What NT$165 buys, and why LINE is expanding it

LINE Premium costs NT$165 per month in Taiwan. Paying that rate for 12 months would total NT$1,980. The charge covers the membership package, including 100GB of cloud backup storage, rather than a separate payment for each editing or silent messaging action.

The backup service supports chat content such as text, photos, videos, voice messages and files. LINE has also offered Premium benefits involving albums, app fonts, app icons and different personal profiles for different social settings.

At the October event, Chang Ching-wen, general manager of LINE Taiwan's portal and content business group, said more than two million people in Taiwan had tried Premium. She did not disclose how many continued as paying subscribers.

LINE's internal figures put discreet Unsend usage at about 92%, the highest among Premium features. Chang also said users younger than 34 made up 57% of those using selectable personal profiles, which allow people to present themselves differently across social settings.

The new package follows the same pattern as those popular tools: giving users more control over what others see and when they see it. Editing controls the wording, silent delivery controls the alert, and preview and read status features control the timing of an interaction.

For existing free users, the immediate decision is narrower than the full package. Someone who rarely edits or sends silently may continue with ordinary messaging and standard Unsend. A person who regularly uses either trial feature will have to weigh that habit against NT$165 a month, alongside any value they place on backups and the other membership benefits.

Key Points

• Free message editing in Taiwan ends on October 20, 2026. Premium users retain the 15 minute editing window.
• Silent messages are expected to become exclusive to Premium in early November 2026.
• LINE Premium costs NT$165 monthly, equivalent to NT$1,980 over 12 months at that rate.
• Standard Unsend in Taiwan remains available within one hour and leaves a notice. Premium extends the window to seven days.
• Discreet Unsend requires an unread message and compatible software. Recipients may already have seen a notification preview.
• Call recording, scheduled messages, discreet previews and delayed read status are planned through the first half of 2027.
• The existing limited iPhone preview will remain free.