WhatsApp is now rolling out several cool features that include the ability to react to a message with emoji, group admins deleting messages, share files that are up to 2GB in size, a massive jump from the previous 100MB limit. Meta, the company behind WhatsApp, said last month that these features would be coming “soon,” and it seems like today’s the day. The company also announced on Thursday that it’ll be doubling the maximum size of group chats.
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Reactions are similar to what is existing in Facebook Messenger and Instagram messages. When reactions were first announced, Meta said that you’d only be able to use a select few to start out with but that support for “all emojis and skin-tones” would be added in the future.
The reactions are a useful feature, which is why other apps out of Meta like Slack and Telegram have had them for a long time — if you want to be able to show that a message made you laugh without clogging up the group chat, you’ve now got a way to do that. WhatsApp is also doubling the default maximum size of group chats, with the cap going from 256 to 512 (though there have reportedly been hack-y workarounds to get past the previous limit, especially from 3rd party WhatsApp apps).
WhatsApp’s blog post notes that larger groups are being “slowly” rolled out, while emoji reactions and increased file size limits are becoming available in the current version of the app. The company expects reactions to be rolled out to everyone in “about a week,” but added that some users already have the feature.
