WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app. Which made it a bit surprising when a feature such as sending GIFs, was not supported in WhatsApp, but is supported in just about every competitor that the company has. Since being bought by Facebook about two years ago, the company has been working hard to bring more and more features into the messaging service. It appeared that GIF support was on the back burner, but now it appears to be available in WhatsApp. At least in version 2.16.242.
Sending GIFs are quite easy in WhatsApp actually. In fact, any video that you send that is under 6 seconds long will automatically turn into a GIF. And basically what that means is that the video will loop. So that you can continue to watch the 6 second video as long as you want. You can also upload existing GIFs to WhatsApp and they will play as regular GIFs, just as long as they are under 6 seconds in length. It’s not full GIF support, but it is definitely a start, and something that users will definitely love. It’s a feature that has been heavily requested from users as of late, so it’s great to see that the WhatsApp team have finally brought it into the service.
WhatsApp is a free service, allowing you to message anyone, anywhere. It uses your phone number instead of an email address or username, to connect with others. Which means you are only able to use it on one device at a time, which is unfortunate for those that use multiple smartphones. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, and have mostly been run as an independent company. However, earlier today it was announced that WhatsApp will begin sharing some data with Facebook. Essentially this is so that Facebook can better target ads to you. This data isn’t being shared with other third-party websites though, and you do have the option to opt out of it as well. Definitely a good thing, especially with the way that many users feel towards Facebook in regard to privacy. If for some reason you haven’t used WhatsApp before, you can download it from the Google Play Store. It’s cross-platform with Windows Phone and iOS as well.
