Although they are not visible to all users yet, Facebook is testing the addition of GIF and attachment buttons.
Over the past few days, some users have noticed that when they open a chat window on Facebook, two new icons appear next to the old ones (photo, stickers, and like), which now appear to the right of the window instead of the left. Let's see what we describe above:
To understand this is the old chat window (which may still apply to you):
And below is the new look:
Clicking on the GIF icon will bring up a list of GIF files that appear to be randomly selected, as well as a search box that shows a search for “GIFS and stickers across all apps.”.
This is of course very interesting, as so far the app is said to only support mobile devices and today's update doesn't mention anything about that. But it could be indicative of future features to come.
The GIF support is also notable given that even on mobile, you have to download a separate full-fledged app like Giphy before you can search for and share GIFs.
With the addition of the new button, you no longer need any other software to share GIFs in your conversations.
The same goes for attachments. In fact, you can already attach all kinds of files to Facebook chat, but you have to first click the gear icon and then select “Add files.” It’s likely that too many users don’t use the feature because they don’t know it’s available.
