WhatsApp has been under Meta ownership for two decades now, and in recent years, the parent company has developed all its social media platforms equally. Today, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook share several features and UI designs, collectively constituting a sizeable chunk of thebest social media apps on Android. Status updates are one such element available across these apps. Now, WhatsApp is borrowing one more visual element from Instagram Stories, making it easier to respond to status updates from contacts.
WhatsApp has a dedicatedUpdatestab on iOS and Android, where users can post ephemeral status updates and view long-term updates fromChannelsthey follow. While the latter is a relatively recent addition to the app’s arsenal of features, ephemeral status updates have been around for many years, making it easy to share links, text, images, and videos with multiple contacts without manually forwarding the content to individual chats. People viewing your status updates can swipe up to react using an emoji or respond using a full message.
A screenshot of the new Reply bar under status updates in WhatsApp for iOS
After updating to WhatsApp beta version 2.2.26.3 on Android,WABetaInfo testers reportseeing a new Reply bar persistently displayed at the bottom of the screen when viewing WhatsApp status updates. This omnipresent UI element replaces the swipe up gesture to initiate a reply, bringing WhatsApp closer to Instagram stories where the reply bar is also visible perpetually. Beta testers also noticed the same change in WhatsApp for iOS (v23.15.10.72).
An immediate question arising out of this change pertains to where emoji reactions will reside now. If Meta decides to replicate the Instagram UI on WhatsApp, we believe emoji will show up as soon as you tap the Reply bar. Moreover, this particular beta version for Android is abuzz with other important changes to the status updates feature, such assupport for HD images and video, which we reported on last week.
Before that, we also spotted WhatsApp developers working on a feature to share yourWhatsApp status updates as Instagram Storieswith a single tap. Since the suite of creative tools and stickers available on Instagram is significantly larger, we suspect this development could lay the groundwork for the same tools to permeate into WhatsApp soon. Until then, WhatsApp status updates from beta testers shared on Instagram may look a bit out-of-place in a sea of crafted Stories content.
Together, these changes make creating and responding to status updates a convenient and intuitive process on WhatsApp. However, these features are still in various stages of development, and are yet to reach users in the stable channel.
