The list of new WhatsApp features keeps growing with each passing day. Among the recent inclusions have been emoji message reactions — as well as the subsequent expansion of available emoji — and that's not even touching upon still-under-development stuff like the ability to add a voice message to your WhatsApp status. That one may not be the only change coming to the status page, though, with the latest beta release showing work towards the ability to reply to users' status updates with quick reactions, pretty much like on Instagram.
The first evidence of this feature surfaced back in April, but only for the desktop beta at the time, as WABetaInfo points out. But now with the release of WhatsApp beta 2.22.16.10 for Android, we get our first look at it in action on a mobile device.
Users can react to status updates with a total of eight emoji, including the ones that depict heart-eyes, laughter, sadness, shock, gratitude, and the usual celebratory/congratulatory moods, as the screenshot below shows. The recipient of the reactions will see the emoji as a reply to their status update.
This one isn't a particularly major feature, but one that should feel quite familiar to users of Instagram and Facebook. It doesn't sound like this ability is user-accessible just yet, even for beta testers, but hopefully we'll get a chance to try it out in an upcoming build. It's similarly unclear when it might make its way to the stable version of the chat app, though it probably won't be long, given the developer's track record.