14 DAY TRIAL // WhatsApp has officially announced stickers, a new feature that allows users to enhance conversations with more content besides animated GIFs and emoji.
Stickers, which are already available in WhatsApp’s top rival iMessage, come with support for both first-party and third-party packs, so in addition to the ones developed by WhatsApp, additional sets can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
WhatsApp encourages developers to create their own stickers and publish them on the Play store, and at this point, there’s just a handful of third-party sets available for download.
“We've included a set of APIs and interfaces that allow you to build sticker apps that add stickers to WhatsApp on Android or iOS. You can publish your sticker app like any other app to the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and users who download and install your app will be able to start sending those stickers right from within WhatsApp,” the company explains.
Rolling out “over the coming weeks”
To send a sticker in WhatsApp for Android, just tap the emoji icon and the bottom of the screen, you should see a new icon next to the smiley face and the GIF label. On iOS, the sticker icon has been added right next to the typing field and you can add stickers in a more straightforward way.
WhatsApp says the feature is rolling out to Android and iOS users worldwide in the coming weeks, so if you can’t see it right now, there’s not much to do than to wait until the update becomes available to everyone.
Android users are a bit luckier and they can get access to stickers right now by downloading the beta version on their devices. This build comes with stickers, but at the same time, it could also include further bugs that could otherwise not exist in the stable release.
You can download WhatsApp beta for Android from Softpedia using this link.
