WhatsApp stickers and emojis get an upgrade

We’ve reported on a lot of big WhatsApp news recently. Various analyses of the WhatsApp beta indicate that we can soon expect to see features like a dark mode, an improved vacation mode, and that WhatsApp may even be shaping up to become a decent audio player. Not all new features have to make such a big splash, however. The updates we’re reporting on today won’t make any fundamental changes to the popular messaging app, but you’ll definitely notice them when they roll out to all WhatsApp users.

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WhatsApp is working on animated stickers and will introduce the official emojis to Doodle

Stickers have been around on WhatsApp for quite some time now, and they’ve added a fun way to customize your chats. You can even create your own WhatsApp sticker packs from photos you’ve taken or received from friends. The latest WhatsApp beta, however, shows that the Facebook-owned app is now working on an official way to kick them up to the next level. Rather than stickers appearing as static images, it looks like soon we’ll be able to send each other animated stickers that move.

There have only been a couple of examples spotted so far, but they look impressive, nonetheless. One is what appears to be a squirrel or small fox rolling around laughing and the other is a rocket ship blasting upwards into space. It also looks like WhatsApp will support animated stickers from third parties, too. Of course, there is no limit to what these animated stickers could become in the future. This is a small change to WhatsApp, but it opens up some interesting and exciting possibilities.

The other small change coming to WhatsApp is the implementation of official emojis in WhatsApp doodle. When this change lands on the full app, the emojis you can stick onto the images, GIFs, and videos you’re sending your friends will change from the specialized WhatsApp set of emojis to the more standardized emojis you see across the rest of WhatsApp and other apps. I’m sure you’ll have noticed that at the moment these emojis look different to the emojis you see when you send them in chats. Again, this isn’t the biggest change, but when it drops, you’ll definitely notice the difference.

There is no news yet about when these small tweaks to WhatsApp will land on the main app. It is likely, however, that as they are only small changes, we could get to see them sooner rather than later. With the bigger changes, like some of those mentioned at the beginning of this article, further development and testing may be needed before they can be fully implemented across the whole app. With smaller features like stickers and emojis, however, there likely won’t be much more work needed.