WhatsApp, the world's most popular instant messaging service, has been adding a lot of features to its platform over the past couple of years. However, most of the new features it brings are mostly inspired by its rival, Telegram. Now, WhatsApp appears to have stolen one more feature from Telegram.
WhatsApp will soon get animated emojis, just like Telegram
According to a new report from WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has started testing animated emojis in chats. This is in line with reports that the instant messaging platform would bring more fun emojis and stickers to the service. These animated emojis look extremely similar to the ones found on Telegram. This feature will appear when you send a single emoji, and WhatsApp will automatically convert a regular emoji into an animated one. It will also increase the size of the emoji to give it more prominence.
It seems these animated emojis are made using Lottie. It is a library that makes it easier for designers to create simple animations while keeping file sizes small. Right now, animated emojis have been spotted on a beta version of WhatsApp For Desktop. However, the feature can soon make it to beta versions of WhatsApp for Android, iOS, and macOS.
This new beta version of WhatsApp also brings some minor changes, including a change to the text size for the About section under each contact. Due to the smaller text size, more information can be seen in the same view. Since the decline of Facebook started, Meta has been adding features to WhatsApp at a faster pace.
