WhatsApp working to bring emoji message reactions to its app.

If you spend enough time using social apps, you get used to certain UX patterns. One example is the ability to react to a message or post — think Instagram or Twitter DMs — but you don’t see it so much with more traditional chat apps. WhatsApp would like to change that, however, and is working to bring message reactions to its app.

According to WABetaInfo, reaction functionality is currently under development.

Some users have received the below message that informs them they’ve received a reaction but cannot view it with their version of the app, suggesting it’s being tested internally or with a very small number of users on a build that’s not public.

There’s very little to go on other than this message, but we can expect the feature to show up in an upcoming beta version of the app. Presumably, we’ll get a specific set of emojis with which to react, although we have no idea exactly how WhatsApp will implement this yet.

With Facebook Messenger, there’s a row of 6 reactive emoji that can be personalized, and Instagram has the same in some places or just simple likes in others. I would think WhatsApp’s iteration will be close to what we see on Messenger, but we shall see. However, it’s clearly in the testing phase, so if nothing else, we should be able to learn more details as beta development continues.

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