Two months after launching the Reactions feature on its instant chat messenger, WhatsApp has finally introduced the much-needed full emoji keyboard support to let users react with their chosen emojis. WhatsApp head at Meta, Will Cathcart, has shared the announcement on his Twitter timeline.
When Reactions for WhatsApp first came into being, users were able to react by using a few select emojis, including like, love, laugh, sad, surprise, and thanks. But there exist no such limitations after today"s announcement -- users can take use the full emoji keyboard. Additionally, users will be able to choose their skin tone while reacting to emojis, similar to how users choose the skin tone of the emoji while sending it for the first time.
Full emoji keyboard support and skin tone for Reactions have been in the testing phase for over a month. So, today"s announcement isn"t entirely a surprise. Though, it"s nice to see WhatsApp launching a feature after only a month of testing with the beta users.
There is a piece of important information that you need to know. WhatsApp will automatically pick the last skin tone used by the user in the main emoji section. If you want to change the skin tone of your Reactions emojis, you need to change it from the main section.
Full emoji keyboard support is now available for mobile users only, but here"s hoping the Meta-owned company will also bring the same functions to other platforms such as the web and desktop. The UWP-based WhatsApp beta and WhatsApp for the web currently support only six emojis. Hopefully, that will change soon.