WhatsApp pushes the button for animated emojis

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, has long been a platform for expressing emotions using a variety of tools such as emojis, GIFs, stickers, and reactions. With an ever-growing collection of emoji characters, users are never at a loss for ways to communicate their feelings.

For an even more personalized touch, the app allows users to create their own custom WhatsApp emoji stickers. But now, it seems that WhatsApp is taking self-expression to the next level by working on introducing animated emojis to its platform.

Animated WhatsApp emojis are in Beta now

According to WABetaInfo, the latest beta release of WhatsApp's desktop app has revealed that the company is actively developing animated emojis. This discovery follows a report from June 2022 that indicated WhatsApp was working on a beating heart emoji reaction. It appears that this enhancement to emoji functionality has been in the works for some time. WABetaInfo also noted that the animated emojis are created using Lottie, an efficient animation file format that is optimized for mobile devices.

This is particularly important given WhatsApp's immense user base of over a billion people across a wide variety of smartphones with differing RAM and storage capacities. The company certainly wouldn't want to introduce a feature that could hinder the app's performance on lower-end devices.

As of now, there doesn't seem to be an option to disable emoji animations within WhatsApp. It remains unclear whether the company plans to offer this feature in the future.

Once the animated WhatsApp emoji feature goes live, it's expected to be available on the platform's mobile apps as well. However, the feature is still in the testing phase, and it may take some time before it becomes accessible on the stable channel.

WhatsApp pushes the button for animated emojis