What emoji reaction changes are actually coming to your photo and media shares on WhatsApp?
According to reports, the new feature isn’t available — even in beta builds — as of this writing. But, once implemented, it will fundamentally change the way emoji-based reactions in the apps work. Albeit, in a way that’s still somewhat subtle. As the reaction features currently stand, users can see who reacted to their photos by selecting the message. And then by selecting the album, photo, or other media in question. That means that users can tell who is responding. And in what way they’ve responded. But not without plenty of extra clicks or taps involved. More importantly, users need to go back and forth between their messages and shares repeatedly, in some cases, to see who responded to what. With the update in place, WhatsApp effectively looks to add a thumbnail of the media that’s been reacted to. In action, that means that users won’t need to click or tap around to find exactly what was being responded to. Instead, the system will highlight the media for them, alongside existing details. Such as who reacted and what reaction they had to the media.
When is this feature improvement coming?
Now, message reactions themselves are relatively new for WhatsApp and the latest feature update isn’t even in beta yet. As with that other WhatsApp update, the improved emoji reaction feature for photos and media isn’t necessarily going to arrive any time soon. When it does arrive, it will land on the beta version of the apps first for testing.
