WhatsApp’s Android beta has a new way to turn typed words into stickers: a button inside the sticker keyboard. The same update raises the number of text sticker designs from five to 10.
To try it, open the sticker keyboard and tap the option for making a new sticker. A panel asks whether you want one built from a photo or from text. Pick text, start typing, and WhatsApp draws your words in 10 styles as you go. Tap any of them to send it straight away, or keep typing until the wording is right.
Until now the maker was tucked behind the search box of the sticker keyboard, which most people use only to look up existing stickers. WABetaInfo found the change in beta 2.26.46.1 from Google Play. The text sticker feature itself first showed up in beta 2.26.1.18 with five styles.
The new styles range from a sticky note and flowing handwriting to a flame-wrapped heart and a bold lightning-bolt backdrop, with a plain white frame, a bright green label and a red warning-sign shape among them.
Text stickers let you send your own words as a sticker without a photo editor, which suits short reactions in busy group chats. Because the button now sits next to the photo option, people who never touched the search box should notice it.
Only some beta testers have the button so far. It is reaching more accounts gradually over the coming weeks, and a date for everyone else on stable WhatsApp has not been announced.
