Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that emoji reactions for Whatsapp messages will be available from today.
The feature was first teased in mid-April and has been in testing since as far back as 2018.
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Who Can Access It
For now only select WhatsApp beta testers can access the message reactions feature.
If you are already a WhatsApp beta tester, you should download WhatsApp beta version 2.22.8.3 for Android.
It should be noted though that not all beta testers can access the feature since reactions are a limited roll-out.
Usefulness
Reactions will allow users to “quickly share their opinion without flooding chats with new messages”.
The feature is useful in order to avoid unnecessary clutter that comes from people sending emojis as text reactions.
The back-to-back notification alerts are not fun to deal with.
Initial Set Of Reactions
The feature is already available in apps like Telegram, Slack, and iMessage and even Instagram, which is also owned by Meta.
The feature will initially have 6 reactions-like, love, laugh, surprise, sad, and thanks- with more coming soon as confirmed by Zuckerberg.
In the future the app will allow users to react with any emoji, GIF, or sticker in the chat.
How It Works
1. Open chat.
2. Press and hold on the message you wish to react to.
3. A pop-up will then appear with the 6 available emoji you can react with.
4. Select one to use as a reaction.
7. The emoji reaction will appear below the text selected.
Reactions Notification Settings
WhatsApp may also give users the ability to enable and disable notifications for these emoji reactions.
Users can locate the reaction notifications toggle under Settings -> Notifications as a toggle called Reaction Notifications.
It has also been confirmed that WhatsApp users will be able to access “all emojis and skin-tones” soon.
Upcoming Updates
There are more updates coming soon.
One such is Communities, which enhances the experience of WhatsApp Groups.
It enables admins with new tools, such as the ability to send a single message to everyone and control over which groups can be included in a particular community.
Others include increased file sharing limit (up to 2GB) and the ability to enable group audio calls for up to 32 people simultaneously.
The voice call feature has been rolled out to all users but the Communities feature is still under development.
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