Emoji add that bit of joy and human touch to textual conversations, even though they are merely symbols in a chat. Their use is so widespread and well-understood that picking the correct emoji quickly is the need of the hour in conversations today. Just last week, we spotted WhatsApp quietly giving theemoji picker keyboard a fresh coat of paint. Turns out someone at Meta is in a big hurry to get this feature out to the masses, as it is now reaching several WhatsApp beta testers.
Meta recently started rolling out WhatsApp beta version 2.23.12.13 through the Google Play Store. AsWABetaInfo points out, this update gives beta testers their first taste of the new emoji keyboard UI. However, the rollout appears to be gradual, because not all testers, including a few members of the Android Police team, are seeing this just yet.
The current state of WhatsApp’s emoji keyboard
WhatsApp’s new emoji keyboard makes it much easier to switch between emoji, GIFs, and stickers. Instead of using the tiny buttons at the bottom of the UI, the new keyboard uses a large pill-shaped bar with tabs for switching between the three. The emoji sub-category bar has also moved from the top to the bottom of the UI. If you do prefer scrolling, the latest beta also reveals you’re able to swipe up on the top edge of the keyboard to make it about three times as tall.
The redesigned emoji picker can be expanded to a full-screen view as well
Eagle-eyed beta testers may also notice the paperclip icon for attachments which sat beside the camera icon in the message box is now a plus icon in the left corner of the box. In its old spot is a button to return to the alphanumeric keyboard when the emoji selector is open. This change could require some muscle memory retraining for regular WhatsApp users.
Attachment button trades spots with the keyboard button(left); New community settings page(right)
The beta also reveals a new settings page for group and community admins, so they can control who can add new groups to a community. By default, only community admins can, but there’s now a new option that allows any member of the community to add groups. Such a setting could be useful when communities are newly formed and under moderated or when crowdsourcing information.
Meta seems to be fast-tracking the development of the emoji keyboard redesign, and we hope to see it in the stable version of the app sometime soon. If you’re a beta tester and don’t have it yet, the wait may not be too long.
