WhatsApp has a ton of features built in, but it’s constantly lagging behind competitor encrypted messaging service Telegram. The latter has long allowed users to send animated replies and emoji, as well as transform videos into stickers. According to a rumours from April, WhatsApp intends to add animated emoticons to the messaging application. Now that six more animated emoji have been seen on the desktop version of the app, we are learning more about this feature that is still in development.
As per information via WABetaInfo, the “partying face” option was the sole animated emoji that was initially revealed. Now that there are six more, the magazine claims they will eventually make it into the WhatsApp Desktop beta. The new features include a loudly crying face, a face with joyful tears, crying out loud, an opened mouth face, and a red heart with fire.
These new animated emoji will be released because of a partnership with Lottie, which enables designers and developers to quickly create animations while maintaining a small file size. This works perfectly with WhatsApp, which has more than 2 billion users globally and the capacity to send millions of animated emoticons every hour. As a result, sustaining standard operations for the messaging app owned by Meta depends heavily on file compression.
WABetaInfo guarantees that the animated emoji will work as expected in real-time. The insider continues, “The new set of animated emoji is in development and will initially appear on WhatsApp Desktop beta in a subsequent release.” Although a release date isn’t specified, these graphic enhancements are apparently coming to WhatsApp beta versions for Android and iOS.
When a WhatsApp feature transitions from the beta and under-development stages to the stable channel, there’s typically no set schedule. However, the Chat Lock feature’s recent launch on the stable channel, which was in the beta stage just last month, gave us hope. Given that animated emoji are a small visual change and not a privacy or security-related feature, it’s possible that the firm won’t pursue them with the same zeal.
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