WhatsApp working on the useful chat-service feature ‘message reactions’ (finally)

Message reactions have been around for quite some time on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, iMessage, and even privacy-centric chat app Signal. However, WhatsApp has been missing on this fun feature and now, finally, XDA-Developers reports the chat service is working on it.

WhatsApp is working on message reactions, at last

Message reactions allow users to react with an emoji to a message and are a fun and convenient way to interact via chat. Now, WhatsApp appears to be working on the feature, WABetaInfo has found evidence of that. However, the new feature is yet to be available for beta testers, so we might have to wait for some time before we can get to use it. As a first step into the development of the new feature, WhatsApp is working on a message informing users that they need to update to receive message reaction support on their app. The message can be seen on the screenshot below:

The message people will see informing them to update their WhatsApp

The above screenshot was taken on WhatsApp beta for Android, but it seems understandable the feature will be available both for Android and for iOS. However, it is still not available in a WhatsApp beta, so there’s still some time to pass before we can get to enjoy this feature on WhatsApp. There is no clear timeframe of when this will happen and how will WhatsApp decide to implement it exactly.

Message reactions have been around for quite some time

Back in 2017, Facebook introduced message reactions to its Messenger app, making it possible to give a quick acknowledgment in the form of emoji to a message or photo your contact has sent you. The feature is currently available to most of the popular chat services and platforms people use, so it has become a natural part of a chat conversation.

Some chat services even have customizable emojis that you can use to react to someone’s message. Although this feature is not a very important one, it still provides a more fun and interactive chat experience, so it is more than natural WhatsApp should be getting it as well in the near future.

Recent useful features WhatsApp beta introduced

Beta versions of WhatsApp for Android and iOS have recently been getting a lot of new features that add to the chat experience on the popular app. Recently, we reported on a new time limit to disappearing messages on the chat platform. Currently, the only available time limit is 7 days, but WhatsApp is working on adding 24 hours and 90 days to the disappearing messages time limit.

On WhatsApp beta for iOS, users are getting another quite useful feature related to photo sending via the platform. A recent WhatsApp beta for iPhones introduced the possibility to send photos in a higher quality, giving users three options to choose from: “Best Quality”, “Data Saver”, and “Auto”. The Best Quality one ensures a better quality of photos with less compression; however it does not completely eliminate the need for photos to be compressed, so the photos are not with their original quality.

And last but not least, WhatsApp has been working on multi-device support and the new feature showed up earlier in beta versions of the app. Mutli-device support ensures you can use WhatsApp even without having your phone around and connected to the internet.

The feature allows you to have up to four other devices connected to your WhatsApp account (not phones, though), and each one of them will have its own identity key for the end-to-end encryption. Right now, each user has only one identity key, responsible for the end-to-end encryption feature, and it is stored on the phone.