Back in June, a changelog revealed several features that were dormant within the WhatsApp for iOS which included such features like temporary group participants, video calling and GIF support. It was only a matter of time for them to be activated from the server side and we are now seeing that for GIFs.
GIFs are one of the oldest form of media that have been used in the World Wide Web and have only become more entrenched in our day to day activities in various social networks. WhatsApp is a pretty big social network on its own and the lack of GIFs was downright embarrassing.
Well, we can put that aside as now WhatsApp has activated GIF support as shown from the beta version of the WhatsApp for Android. My current beta version is 2.16.290 and it shows the new GIF support.
WhatsApp has decided to give GIFs a special tab under the attachment menu which is rather interesting. When you open a chat and you would like to send a GIF, just tap on the attachment menu (has a paperclip icon), click on gallery and you will be able to see the new GIF tab. This will make it easy for you to find the GIFs that you have in your gallery easy to find which is awesome. You can now go ahead and send a GIF to your friend to make those chats way more lively.
Since this feature has appeared on the beta channel, you can expect it to be on the way to the general public in the future. This is a better late than never case for WhatsApp but they have to put in effort since the likes of Telegram have cool GIF integration which is yet to be bested due to its speed.