HIGHLIGHTS
- WhatsApp Reactions have been under development for some years.
- The addition will allow the messenger to finally catch up to competitors.
- Meta CEO disclosed the introduction of WhatsApp Reactions in his Instagram Story.
WhatsApp Reactions will be available starting today, allowing the instant messaging network to catch up with rivals like Telegram and iMessage, as well as productivity tools like Slack and even sister firm Instagram. The functionality will allow users to instantly respond to messages with an emoji, with six initially accessible - like, love, laugh, surprise, sad, and thanks - however testing has revealed that all emojis will be available in the future.
The news was made via an Instagram story by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had previously hinted the feature as coming shortly in the company's big revelation regarding WhatsApp Communities. As previously said, there would initially be just six WhatsApp Reactions, which Zuckerberg also addressed in his post, which can be seen below.
A future upgrade, on the other hand, may just enable WhatsApp Reactions users to use any emoji, GIF, or sticker in the messenger, according to a recent report citing evidence in a development build. When users hit the + button, they will have access to the whole emoji keyboard, according to the newest version seen in testing. However, the expanded emoji response palette is not yet accessible, even to beta testers.
The WhatsApp Reactions feature has been in testing since 2018, although at first, sticker reactions were intended before it took on a more final shape in testing last year. Previously, the functionality was known as Emoji Reactions, Message Reactions, and Quick Reactions.
WhatsApp claimed in its major announcement last month that Communities will add various capabilities over and beyond WhatsApp Groups, including equipping managers with new tools, such as the ability to send a single message to everyone and control over which groups may be included in a certain community.
WhatsApp has also promised other impending changes, such as an expanded file sharing capacity (up to 2GB) and the option to allow group audio calls for up to 32 individuals at the same time, of which only the latter has been handed out so far.
