As most of you might know, WhatsApp supports animated stickers. What most of you might now know is that the platform supports animated stickers only in the WebP format. While this format is great for efficiency, as it offers a small package size, it isn’t great for quality, as content in this format starts looking pixelated as you keep increasing its size. In other words, animated stickers in the WebP format might look sharp on small screens but pixelated on large screens. WhatsApp is now trying to solve the issue.
According to a new report from WABetaInfo, the latest beta version of WhatsApp for Android (version 2.24.5.10) brings support for animated stickers in the Lottie format. This is a vector file format unlike WebP, which is a raster file format. As such, content in the Lottie format will look sharp (maintain quality) no matter how much you increase its size. It means that animated stickers in the Lottie file format will look sharp on small as well as large screens.
WABetaInfo reports that animated stickers in the Lottie file format can also offer “more fluid motions, vibrant colors, and intricate details” compared to those in the WebP format. At this point, you might be thinking that these improvements might come at the cost of an increased file size. Well, no. Stickers in the Lottie file format should have a similar or smaller package size compared to those in the WebP format. So, you are getting the best of both worlds.
While. all of that sound good, creators might have to put in more work to create stickers in the Lottie file format compared to creating those in the WebP file format. At the moment, there’s no information about when WhatsApp will make this feature available in the stable version of the app. Expect that to happen once the company completes testing it on the web, iOS, Windows, Mac, and other platforms, which could take at least a couple of months.
