Photo: Jeremy Bezanger
By: Nick Gambino
Message reactions have become a staple of text conversations on nearly every platform, including Messenger, iMessage, Signal, Instagram, and Twitter DMs. The option to simply tag a message with a little emoji in the corner tends to make conversations simpler and, in my opinion, a bit more natural.
Strangely this just isn’t available on one of the most popular texting apps on the planet – WhatsApp. Well, that’s about to change because they are now adding this feature to their in-app messaging.
With the news that Google is adding message reaction support for those texting an Android phone from an iPhone, it’s a big week for the continued proliferation of emoji reactions. We’ve had this feature for years in apps like iMessage, so when I flip over to WhatsApp to text, I’m thrown off when the option doesn’t exist to add a simple heart or “haha” to a message.
The new feature is available in beta for some Android users, leaving us iPhone peasants in the lurch. If you’re one of the lucky few Android lords who has access to the WhatsApp beta in version 2.22.8.3, you’ll see the ability to react to messages with the usual suspects: heart, laughing face, thumbs up, crying face, surprised face and even a praying emoji (or whatever those hands are supposed to be).
Whether you have the beta version of the app or not, it looks like everyone will be able to see the reactions. Now, I don’t know if that’s a good thing as it’s just going to cause FOMO for the rest of us.
I can’t imagine a world where WhatsApp doesn’t make this a permanent feature for every user on both Android and iOS. They’re owned by Meta which has already made it available on Facebook and Instagram.
Hopefully, every WhatsApp user will be able to add a convenient emoji reaction to any message by the end of 2022. And if hope is a real thing, the idea that this feature isn’t a necessity will be purged from this fine Earth. I demand my right to not respond with a typed-out message when a simple reaction icon will do.
