“Waiting for this message. This may take a while” – WhatsApp Message Error

Seeing “Waiting for this message. This may take a while” in WhatsApp? Learn why it happens, how to fix it by updating WhatsApp, reconnecting devices, and using WhatsApp Business for better stability.

If your clients are seeing the message:

“Waiting for this message. This may take a while”

instead of the actual message content, this means that WhatsApp was not able to decrypt the message at the time of delivery.

This is not an error caused by the Whapi.Cloud API, but rather a limitation within WhatsApp itself.

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🧭 Why This Happens

This issue is typically related to encryption sync problems between devices. According to WhatsApp’s official documentation, the error can occur when:

• Devices are using different versions of WhatsApp

• A message is received while one of the devices is temporarily offline or not fully synced

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✅ What You Can Do

Here are recommended steps to resolve the issue:

1. Reinitialize end-to-end encryption As the owner of the number connected to the API channel, open WhatsApp on your phone, stay online, and send any message in the affected group. Make sure that both sides (sender and recipient) are online at the same time.

2. Update WhatsApp Make sure the WhatsApp app is updated to the latest version from the App Store or Google Play.

3. Unlink all connected devices

   • Go to WhatsApp → Settings → Linked Devices

   • Disconnect all devices and restart your phone

   • Reconnect your WhatsApp number to the API (scan the QR code again)

4. Use WhatsApp Business We strongly recommend using the WhatsApp Business app instead of the regular version. Based on our experience, such encryption errors are significantly less frequent with WhatsApp Business.

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ℹ️ Important

This issue is not caused by the API and cannot be fixed programmatically. It depends on how WhatsApp handles encryption and session synchronization on the original device.

If the problem persists even after these steps, please contact our support team for further diagnostics.