WhatsApp is one of the most used apps in the UK thanks to its simple interface and the fact that it is available for both iPhone and Android. Meta’s service has proven incredibly popular on these shores, but it seems its loyal users don’t always like it when WhatsApp makes changes to the app’s appearance.
That applies to the latest update that WhatsApp fans have started seeing in the app over the past week. The company has shipped an upgrade that takes away the text that says “typing” when one of your contacts is currently typing a message in one of your chats.
Instead, that familiar indicator is replaced by a chat bubble that appears in the chat itself instead of at the top of the screen next to the chat name. The speech bubble is animated with three little dots that jump up and down, just like Apple’s iMessage chats look when someone taps you.
WhatsApp users took to social media this week as the change started to be noticeable
“The new WhatsApp typing animation seems deliberately designed to scare me,” said X user @RichyCraven.
Fellow user @Avii_007 agreed, saying: “WhatsApp now has things with three dots like iMessage and I hate it.”
“Hey @WhatsApp, can we just go back to so and so is typing? This dot-dot-dot bouncing up and down is starting to get annoying,” wrote @farahharith.
But some people disagreed and praised the update.
“I love the new type designation in WhatsApp. But it would be more fun to see how many characters are typed,” said @anarchyco.
“WhatsApp has a new typing indicator and I like it,” wrote @Cartidise. This user said this in October, but now it seems most UK WhatsApp users have received the update. This is often automatic, so if you don’t have it yet, you can do so soon.
Dozens of WhatsApp faithful threw their toys out of the stroller earlier this year when the app briefly changed the tags “typing” and “online” to the capital letters “Typing” and “Online,” prompting WhatsApp to quickly revert back to lowercase .
That small change was quickly reversed due to the outcry, which was surprising. This time, it looks like the new bubbles could be permanent.