Google to Introduce Emoji Reactions Feature for Gmail on Android, iOS

Google’s well-known email client, Gmail, has been receiving improvements and new features to improve usability.

Now, Gmail may soon get a new emoji reaction function that will enable users to respond to emails with emojis on both iOS and Android. The capability that is already present in Microsoft Outlook is comparable to this one. A recent report states that the feature will include an emoji button next to the three-dot menu on the right side of the email. Users can rapidly respond to emails by choosing an emoji from a list of options by clicking this icon.

Emoji reactions may be about to go live, according to a report by AssembleDebug on the TheSpAndroid blog. To give a thorough overview of what is possible, AssembleDebug was able to access the feature in the Android version of the Gmail client.

When the new emoji react button in Gmail is initially hit, a Google tip on the feature is said to appear. Users of Gmail can see your response in the original message, so respond swiftly and with personality. The tip states that other people will get it as a reply email. This explains why emoji responses to emails sent to those who don’t use the native Gmail client on their phones will appear as distinct email answers rather than as reactions to the same email.

Users will see a pre-selected list of five emojis to choose from and respond to the email instantly after hitting the emoji reaction icon. Additionally, there is a “+” button in the list that users may use to access the whole emoji collection and choose how they wish to respond to the mail. Users can respond to an email with an emoji in one of three ways, according to the report. This contains an emoji button below the Reply, Reply All, and Forward buttons in the email as well as an emoji icon next to the three-dot menu, a ‘add reaction’ option within the three-dot menu itself, and another emoji button.

According to the article, users may also respond to emails by touching on emojis that others have already used to respond to the same email. People who use other email clients are apparently going to receive each emoji reaction as a separate reply to the main email, however Gmail users on iOS and Android will have native support for emoji reactions within the app, with the reactions appearing on the parent email. It is yet unclear whether the feature will go out simultaneously on phones and the Gmail website.

The ‘Help Me Write’ feature, which is powered by AI, was first made available to Workspace Labs testers on Gmail for Android and iOS back in June. Based on the user’s prompts, the tool assists in drafting an email. At its yearly Google I/O 2023 conference in May, the search engine giant unveiled the ‘Help Me Write’ function along with a number of other AI capabilities.