WhatsApp is the most used messaging app in the world with over two billion people who actively converse and exchange multimedia content with friends, relatives, colleagues and simple contacts. The company, for years now, continuously improves improvements to keep up with the times and, above all, to contrast the increasingly fierce competition from different fronts.
Among the media that can be shared on WhatsApp there are stickers, or adhesives, which represent a way to explicitly express your mood in a creative way. Unlike other apps, WhatsApp allows you to officially share only static stickers, while animated ones can be downloaded directly from the app only after the installation of official updates in the past few hours. Unfortunately, however, WhatsApp did not give precise timing.
The stickers are therefore not new on WhatsApp, beacuse the app allows you to send and receive them for a long time, and also manage them from third-party sources. With the novelty, however, it becomes possible to download animated stickers directly from the application store, through a more reliable procedure than that possible today. The feature has already appeared for the first users on the latest client beta for iOS and Android.
According to rumors not yet officially confirmed, the company would also be working on the implementation of stickers with loop playback, even if the functionality has not yet been introduced on the clients of the service, even in the experimental variants.
The company has made official in the past few hours also several other news, including the arrival of QR codes (which have also appeared on beta versions for some time) to share their account, the dark mode also on WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Desktop, and also other minor changes:
- animated stickers: stickers are increasingly used to communicate on WhatsApp, and our users send billions of them every day. We are implementing new packages of animated stickers that are increasingly fun and expressive
- QR codes: with new functions, adding a new contact will be even easier. To add a new contact, just frame its QR code. You no longer have to enter the number manually
- dark mode for WhatsApp Web and Desktop: the beloved dark mode now also arrives on the computer
- improvements to group video calls: now that you can start a video call with 8 participants, we’ve made it easier to focus on one participant at a time. Just hold down his video to view it in full screen. We have also added a video icon in chats with up to 8 participants, so you can start a group video call with one touch
- the status also arrives on KaiOS: KaiOS users now have the function that allows you to share updates to the status for 24 hours
As we have already written, unfortunately, the WhatsApp team has not been precise on the timing within which the news will arrive. The blog says that they are scheduled for the “next few weeks”, for users who will update the client to the latest versions available for download.
° BLOG ° Gabriele Romano 