WhatsApp gets emoji reactions

WhatsApp announced on Thursday that it was adding emoji reactions to its chat app, allowing you to express your feelings about a message without having to send a single emoji as a message. Though the company announced reactions alongside its new community feature, meta spokesman Joshua Breckman said The edge that reactions will be available in all chats when they are launched, which will be “soon”.

The feature will be relatively limited at launch, only letting you respond with six emojis (although WhatsApp has chosen the most important ones, in my opinion). However, Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said that it will support “all emojis and skin tones” in the future.

It’s nice to see this feature coming to such a popular messaging app, as I’ve always appreciated having it in apps like Slack or Telegram (which only got them a few months ago). The company also announced that users will be able to share much larger files, capping the maximum file size from 100MB to 2GB. Also, the number of people who can join a voice call at the same time has been increased from eight to 32.