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Popular messaging service WhatsApp will be adding animated stickers in the new update, which are slowly rolling out to users that have downloaded beta releases of WhatsApp on Android and iPhone.
Many have used stickers on WhatsApp as a way to irritate people or personalise messages - depending on your perspective. Regular sticker packs are widely available to download on the Google Play Store app to use on the Facebook-owned messaging app. Now, they'll be animated. They are a bit like GIFs but unlike GIFs, they are not looped and can only "play" one time.
WABetaInfo reveals that the animated stickers will launch in three phases. In the first stage, some users will be able to view animated stickers. Once they receive animated stickers, those users can save, send and forward them.
"When you’re able to view animated stickers, you can save and send all received animated stickers. The possibility to import animated stickers from third parties. Third parties can offer their own animated stickers packs. A lot of animated stickers creators were working in these months to provide animated stickers to be imported into WhatsApp. The possibility to download default animated sticker packs from the WhatsApp Store, currently implemented in the app," said WABetaInfo in a report.
In recent months, WhatsApp was working to implement a lot of new features. The most recent one is a search by date feature for iOS and new tools for Storage Usage for Android.
You need to update your WhatsApp version to the 2.20.194.7 Android beta and 2.20.70.26 iOS beta versions or newer updates, in order to view Animated Stickers.
If you have already updated to the most recent version available and you don’t see the feature, back up your chat history and reinstall WhatsApp. This is because every time you reinstall WhatsApp, the most updated configurations from the server are downloaded, enabling the feature for you.
While some users were able to send animated stickers (these were always visible from WhatsApp Web), others might not have been able to view or star them.
Therefore, if you receive any animated sticker from a contact, and you have received the activation for the first part of the feature, you are able now to view, save, star, send and forward it.