After what seemed like a really long time, WhatsApp finally introduced GIF support in its app in November last year. First iPhone users got it, and in December, Android users received the update as well. Now, the instant messaging app has gone a step further and integrated GIF search into the app, and also raised the media sharing limit from 10 to 30, on the WhatsApp beta app for Android.
WhatsApp beta v2.17.6 for Android has brought the ability to search for GIF images and use them in chat conversations. It can be found on the web and use it in chat conversations seamlessly. Furthermore, the media sharing limit that was previously capped at 10 has now been raised to 30. A new GIF icon now appears at the bottom when you tap on the emoji button.
Opening the GIF section throws a lot of popular GIF sharing options available on Giphy (as seen above). You can even search for related GIFs using keywords, select the one you like, and send to users without leaving the app even once. Notably, not all users are seeing Giphy as the GIF image search integration – one of our team for example, is seeing the TENOR GIF search (seen below) instead – possibly because he uses that keyboard on Facebook Messenger. Uninstalling Facebook Messenger did not cause WhatsApp to throw up the Giphy option instead.
When GIF support first launched, users could convert live images or videos into short GIFs and send them on WhatsApp. Later, you could even share saved GIFs directly from the phone, and now integration of Giphy makes GIF-sharing extremely seamless.
Furthermore, a significant change with respect to image sharing has been introduced. The ceiling limit of sharing 10 photos at a time via WhatsApp has been increased to 30. This change will be greatly welcomed by users, as sharing bulk images on WhatsApp was a tedious task due to the cap. This raise in ceiling limit will smooth things out a bit.
As we said, all of the above mentioned features are in Android beta version 2.17.6, and should arrive on the stable version soon. For now, if you want to experience seamless GIF searching and sharing, and send bulk images to your friends, join the WhatsApp beta testing community on Google Play.
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