The First Peek at WhatsApp Message Reaction

Often, with the right emotional reaction, you can reply with, words that are very unnecessary. Messengers have been implementing this feature for a long; now that Telegram, Signal, or Facebook Messenger have it already, it’s WhatsApp’s turn. Thanks to WABetaInfo, now we have an opportunity to see how it might look, at least, in beta.

The first peeks of reactions were published by WABetaInfo, the site that explores and disassembles new beta versions of WhatsApp, on its official Twitter account. As we see, there is no special reaction icon; you need to tap and hold the body of the message for options to pop up along with other options, like Reply, Star, Forward, Copy, and so on.

There are six available reactions, according to what we see on the screenshots. The overall set of reactions is similar to what we see on Instagram. Among the options, though, there is no “angry” reaction. Instead, we see the “thank you” palms. The rest are the same: Love, Thumb up, Laugh, Cry, and Wow; they are arranged a bit differently. This set also differs from reactions available within Facebook Messenger. This may cause issues with compatibility as all these messengers are supposed to be interconnected soon. So if you use Instagram and try to send an “angry” reaction to a message sent from WhatsApp, it’s not clear how it will show.

The new feature is only available in the beta version, and the number of participants is limited. Android users can download the WhatsApp Beta installer from third-party sources (like APK Mirror) and install it manually.

Do you often reply to messages with reactions? Do you do it to save the words or because they fully express what you feel about it? How important is it for WhatsApp, and do you feel its current absence compared to Instagram or Facebook? While Meta researches the feedback, let’s talk about our own experience in the comments!