It’s finally herrrree! Facebook has rolled out custom emoji reactions across it’s Messenger and Instagram messaging platforms. What does that mean? Basically, you’re no longer limited to the five default reactions that pop up when you want to emoji react to someone’s message. Instead of just a plain ol’ red heart, you could react with a sparkly heart, or a relaxed smile, or, depending on the message, one of these ones: 🥰
You probably realised the change occurred when Facebook Messenger refreshed it’s look with a new purple-ombre logo. While it definitely doesn’t make up for the company’s poor track record with it’s users privacy (among other things), it does make chats a lot more loose and fun.
How to use new custom emoji reacts on Facebook Messenger
Using the new reacts is a pretty intuitive process, but we’ll break it down here anyway. Much like with a normal react, press and hold on the message that you want to drop an emoji on. From there, click the small grey “+” icon that comes up next to the five emojis. This will bring up a whole keyboard of emojis you can use for a one-off reaction. What are some of our new favourite single-use emoji reacts to use? Gotta be the clown emoji, the grimace and the woozy face.
How to create a list of custom reactions shortcuts on Facebook Messenger
From the above step, it’s pretty easy to customise your default emoji reaction “keyboard” or shortcuts on Messenger. Simply tap the emoji reaction you want to swap out and then scroll through the options to replace it. The emoji you’re replacing will be the one that’s not greyed out, like below.
How to change to the new chat themes on Facebook Messenger
While WhatsApp users have been enjoying playing around with backgrounds in their chats for years, Facebook Messenger hasn’t really been all that customisable, until now.
To use the new Facebook Messenger themes simply tap on the name of your conversation, or the title of your group chat and tap, “Themes.” From there you can pick from loads of different colour combinations and even one’s tied to holidays, for example, the Halloween theme for spooky season.
Cute, right? If you want to know more about the new Instagram and Facebook messenger updates, including how to use Vanish Mode to send disappearing messages, we’ve covered that here! Happy chatting everyone!
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