WhatsApp Reactions will begin rolling out today, allowing the instant messaging network to finally catch up to competitors like Telegram and iMessage, as well as productivity tools like Slack and even sister firm Instagram. The feature will allow users to instantly respond to messages with an emoji, and there will be six available at first – like, love, laugh, surprise, sad, and thanks – though testing has shown that all emojis will be available in the future.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised the feature as coming soon in the company’s big reveal about WhatsApp Communities last month, and the news was made via an Instagram story by the Meta-owned brand. As previously said, there will initially be only six WhatsApp Reactions, which Zuckerberg also addressed in his story – which you can read below.
A future update however, may just allow WhatsApp Reactions users to utilise any emoji, GIF, or sticker in the messenger, a recent report tipped citing evidence in a development build. The latest version spotted in testing looks set to give access to the entire emoji keyboard when users tap the plus button. For now thought, the wider emoji reaction palette is not yet available even to beta testers.
The WhatsApp Reactions feature has been in testing since as far back as 2018, but initially, sticker reactions were planned, before it took something closer to its final form in testing last year. The feature has been referred to as Emoji Reactions, Message Reactions, and Quick Reactions in the past.
WhatsApp disclosed last month that Communities will provide numerous capabilities above and above WhatsApp Groups, including new tools for administrators, such as the ability to send a single message to everyone and control over which groups can be included in a community.
WhatsApp had also teased enhancements such as a higher file sharing capacity (up to 2GB) and the option to make group audio conversations with up to 32 people at once, but only the latter has been implemented thus far.
