WhatsApp offers a ton of functionality on board, though it's always catching up to rival encrypted messaging platform Telegram. The latter has long allowed users to convert videos into stickers and send animated reactions and emoji. An April report shed light on WhatsApp's plans to incorporate animated emoji into the chat app. We're now learning more about this under-development feature as an additional six animated emoji have been spotted on the desktop version of the app.
As WABetaInfo notes, the initial revelation about animated emoji only showed the "partying face" option. The publication has now found half a dozen more, claiming these will make it to WhatsApp Desktop beta in the future. Among the new additions are: Face with Tears of Joy, Loudly Crying Face, Crying Face, Face with Open Mouth, Red Heart, and Fire.
We've previously learned that these new animated emoji will arrive as part of a collaboration with Lottie, which enables developers and designers alike to generate quick animations while keeping the file size relatively minuscule. This is a perfect match for WhatsApp which has over 2 billion users worldwide and the potential to send millions of animated emoji every other hour. This makes file compression a key factor in maintaining standard operations for the Meta-owned messaging app.
WABetaInfo promises that although the video above may look sluggish due to file compression issues on the web, the performance of the animated emoji in real-time will match expectations. The new set of animated emoji is in development and will first arrive on WhatsApp Desktop beta in a future release, the source goes on to say. Meanwhile, these visual additions are reportedly coming to beta versions of WhatsApp for Android and iOS, although a date isn't mentioned.
There's usually no timeline for when a WhatsApp feature makes it to the stable channel after going through the under-development and beta phases. However, we were encouraged by the recent rollout of the Chat Lock feature on the stable channel, which was still in the beta stage last month. Perhaps the company won't pursue animated emoji with the same sense of urgency, given that it's a minor visual tweak and not a privacy/security-related functionality.