Animated stickers have been available in Telegram and Gboard for a long while, but WhatsApp has only supported static sticker images so far. Be it through the app's few included packs or downloadable third-party packs from the Play Store, you got still image stickers. That's changing now in WhatsApp beta, as the app is introducing animated sticker support.

The feature first showed up on June 22, in beta v2.20.194.7 and then disappeared the same day in v2.20.194.9. It's now live in v2.20.195.2 beta (APK Mirror) and seems to be here to stay. Just click on the emoji button in the text box, select the sticker panel at the bottom, then tap the plus button to add new stickers. You'll find the first animated pack, Playful Piyomaru, among the regular non-animated packs you can download. If you expand it, you can see all included stickers and preview them by tapping any of them.

We know four other packs should be joining it Piyomaru: Rico's Sweet Life, Moody Foodies, Chummy Chum Chums, and Bright Days. But these can't be added or found until someone sends you a sticker from each of them. That will likely change in the future. We didn't find any third-party packs that support the feature yet.

Stickers from animated packs are live in the conversation, though they only animate once and stop. You need to scroll up or down to trigger them to play again. That might change later or it could be a conscious decision on the devs' part to avoid too much movement on your screen when you're trying to read some messages. The stickers also show up as animated in the built-in WhatsApp picker, but they do loop indefinitely there.

If you want to test these stickers out, you need to be on beta v2.20.195.1 or 195.2 of WhatsApp, the latter of which is available on APK Mirror, and either add Piyomaru from the official sticker store or get sent a sticker from the other packs by someone who's enabled them. We'll probably still need to wait a bit to get the proper rollout with all the packs readily available for all users plus third-party support.

UPDATE: 2020/07/01 6:59am PDT BY RITA EL KHOURY

Back and working

After a brief and very basic test in late June, sticker packs are now live in the latest beta with an easy way to get at least one pack in your conversations. The post has been updated to reflect that information and provide the proper app version and APK Mirror link.

Via: WABetaInfo (1), (2)

Thanks: Moshe