Emoji reactions are coming to Gmail on Android AssembleDebug September 07, 2023

Emoji's are a big part of our day to day conversation and they made their ways into our conversations with social media apps. One of the ways we can express our emotion or react to how we feel about something we see on social media is using emoji reactions. 

Emoji reactions were limited to social media before but now are making their way into our emails as well. Microsoft outlook already have this feature and Gmail is also next one in line to add support for them.

A few days ago Steve Moser from the TheTapeDrive found that Google is adding emoji reaction to Gmail on its iOS app. Now after I looked into the latest Gmail APK for Android, it turns out that Google is adding it on as Android as well. So they are probably coming to both iOS and Android at the same time. 

A few string in Gmail APK which I found are 

• Add emoji reactions
• Coming soon: Emoji reactions
• You're among the first Gmail users to get an emoji reaction. Soon you'll be able to send emoji reactions yourself.

Above string indicates that Google Emoji's won't come to everyone at once and may be tested in batches publicly first before getting rolled out to everyone. 

There are few limitations for emoji reactions as well which Google listed in the app - 

• You received this via BCC, so you can't react with an emoji.
• You can't react with an emoji to this encrypted message.
• You can't react with an emoji to a large group.
• You can't react with an emoji more than (number) times.
• You cannot add more than 20 emoji reactions to a message
• This message has hit the limit of 50 unique reactions

The last limits are kind of vague and doesn't make it clear what they are referring to until we see it in action. You will be able to react to emails directly from the email screen or from the overflow menu (three dots) using the emoji reactions (wording may change) option. The overflow menu item is currently disabled and we can expect it to be enabled in upcoming versions. 

 <item android:id="@id/add_reaction" android:visible="false" android:orderInCategory="3" />

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