WhatsApp will soon allow you to use any emoji to react to a message

Meta has announced several other improvements to the messenger app

WhatsApp is expanding its reaction feature to include all emojis. Photo: The National

WhatsApp’s new reaction feature is about to expand to include all emojis, Mark Zuckerberg has announced.

The Meta-owned messenger app gave users the ability to react to individual messages for the first time in May, although the spectrum was limited to six basic emojis: thumbs up, love heart, laughing face, shocked face, cry face and high five.

However, when the new update is rolled out, users will have access to the full emoji keyboard when reacting to individual messages, including skin tone variations.

Meta chief executive Zuckerberg announced the update in a post on Monday, and shared some of his own favourite emojis, which include robot, fries, surfer and fist pump.

The post attracted more than 60,000 likes and 12,000 comments, with a number of people excited about the news, and several others requesting further updates for WhatsApp and Facebook.

“Love this, can’t wait to see it in action,” one user wrote.

“This is a great move, well done,” another commented.

Several others made suggestions of other ways to improve the WhatsApp experience.

“Can you also work on users not being able to add people randomly on unnecessary groups?” one comment said. “Also, when I leave a group, participants shouldn’t be notified. I want to live a peaceful life without drama.”

However, WhatsApp announced in May that it was testing a way to allow users to “silently” leave a group. Currently, when you wish to leave a group chat, all members of that chat will see a notification.

The company has announced several other improvements to the messenger app, including allowing users to send files up to 2GB, a major upgrade to its current 100MB limit.

It will also increase the number of users allowed in a group chat, something it said was among its most-requested features. The new limit will allow up to 512 people to participate in a chat.