WhatsApp planning new sticker feature to liven up messages

Instant messaging app WhatsApp is going to roll out a new feature – animated stickers – to users to make their conversation more interesting.

The animated stickers will be rolled out in a phased, three-step process. The new feature is in the very early stage of the first step at present. The feature can be viewed on the beta version of WhatsApp on both Android – version 2.20.194.7 – as well as on iOS – 2.20.70.26.

According to a report, in the first stage of the feature rollout, some users are being given the ability to view the animated stickers. It is also possible to save and send or forward any animated sticker that you receive, but at this stage, it’s not possible to download or use sticker packs like those that currently exist for static stickers.

There are very few animated stickers currently in circulation because they are in the early stage but the number will increase.

Animated stickers hopefully won’t take too long to be made available for download as the rollout expands.

Two other stages to the rollout will involve 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 third and final stage will see the arrival of animated sticker packs in the WhatsApp Store.

At present it’s not known quite when these different options will be made available, nor when animated stickers will become more widely available.