If you rely on emoji to quickly react to messages on your mobile device, you might wish you could use them in other circumstances. Instead of typing a full email response, for example, perhaps you could benefit from being able to convey thoughts with a simple emoji. Now, Google wants to bring this to fruition forGmailusers. The company is supposedly working on adding the option to react to emails directly within Gmail.
Emoji reactions are anticipated to roll out for Gmail in batches beginning in October, according toAssembleDebugonTheSpAndroid. Once it’s enabled, the silhouette of a smiley face emoji will pop up to the right of an email in Gmail. When you click on it, you’ll receive a suggestion to “Respond quickly and add personality,” giving you the option to select an emoji. If you choose to respond and react with one, recipients who are using Gmail will see your emoji at the bottom of the email. Those who are a part of the conversation — but not using Gmail — will receive your reaction as a standard email reply, a lot like thoseannoying iMessage reactions.
When you react when an emoji, you’ll be presented with five preset options, but tapping on the “+” will open a menu with more you can use. Google may also integrate an option to simply tap on an existing reaction from another recipient to chime in on a thread. However, there appear to be a few caveats with the feature. For example, emoji reactions cannot be used in BCC or encrypted emails. A maximum of 20 emoji reactions can only be added to an email, and there can be no more than 50 unique reactions. Additional limitations may be included, but these details have yet to be confirmed.
Theemoji reactions have been in the worksfor weeks. Information spotted in the code of the iOS Gmail app suggested that Google has been developing the feature for some time. Eventually, more strings of code suggesting the same were discovered in the Gmail APK for Android. AssembleDebugwas able to manipulate these strings using rootin order to get emoji reactions working, but it’s a safe bet that the feature will be progressively rolled out once it does become available, rather than integrated across all of Gmail immediately.
It would seem that Google is making moves to help Gmail users create a more personal messaging experience. In the least, emoji reactions could give people an option to acknowledge a recipient’s message without the immediate need to write a reply. While there is the potential for miscommunication through emoji use, this sole benefit could outweigh the risk.
