WhatsApp for Android may soon get animated chat themes: three styles spotted in beta

WhatsApp beta for Android 2.26.31.2 gives an early glimpse of animated chat themes. The clue comes from unreleased elements found in the Android beta code, which suggest WhatsApp is working on a more customizable look for individual chats. You can’t download the themes or test them yet, and the feature is still being built.

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Even in its unfinished state, the animated chat themes feature already hints at how WhatsApp may organize it. The themes showing up in the Android beta code seem to fall into three groups: Featured, Doodle, and Minimal. Featured appears to use slow-moving animated wallpapers. Doodle refreshes the patterned backgrounds. Minimal goes in the opposite direction, with simpler plain-color styles. The same beta code also suggests that only be visible to you, not to everyone else in the chat. WhatsApp also seems set to tweak message bubble colors on its own to keep text readable, while still giving users the option to change those colors manually.

If you’re the kind of person who tweaks the apps you use every day, this one will probably be worth checking out when it finally lands. It also lines up with WhatsApp’s wider move toward more customization, and possibly with future WhatsApp Plus extras such as custom icons, exclusive stickers, and support for more pinned chats, though Meta hasn’t confirmed any of that.

For now, animated chat themes are still just an unreleased feature spotted in the WhatsApp for Android beta code.