Developers plan to add support for animated stickers to WhatsApp. According to the WABetaInfo portal, this function has already appeared in one of the versions of the messenger.
The novelty is already available to some users of the beta version of WhatsApp for Android under the number 2.24.5.10. It is stated that animated stickers can be in WebP or Lottie format. Thanks to the second type, stickers can be enlarged and reduced without sacrificing quality, which makes such stickers universal for different screen sizes.
Currently WhatsApp only has static stickers and emojis, as well as animated emojis that only play when sent separately from text. Due to the lack of support for animated stickers, many users instead send GIF animations to their interlocutors.
Animated stickers and emojis have been available on Telegram for several years and are popular with messaging users who often use images rather than simple emoticons and status descriptions.
The feature is still under development. There is no information yet on when animated stickers based on Lottie will appear in the stable version of WhatsApp for Android, iOS and other platforms.
Previously on WhatsApp seen new text formatting features.