Facebook Messenger App Adds Video Reactions, Filters, and Masks to Video Chat

According to a new blog post, Facebook has introduced a handful of new video reactions, filters, and masks within the video chat portion of its Messenger app, hoping to add a bit more diversion for younger users as well as competing more with similar video chat apps.

Messenger‘s new video chat “Reactions” are basically animated versions of the five Facebook emoji reactions available across the platform: love, laughter, surprise, sadness, and anger.

During a chat, users can tap on the reaction button at the bottom of the screen, and choose one of these five. The chosen reaction will then animate onto the screen. For example, if a user chooses the sadness reaction, cartoon tears will animate and appear to fall from your eyes.

Nora Micheva, a Product Manager at Facebook, said in a blog post: “To keep the fun alive, most reactions have different versions depending on whether your face is on or off the screen.”

“Tap the love reaction (like when you’re in a group video chat with your three best friends and someone shares amazing news) when the camera is facing you and tap it again when the camera is facing outward to see the difference,” she continued.

On top of that, the messaging application has introduced a few new stylistic “filters” that can give the video a different lighting effect or color type, just like Instagram filters. These filters can be previewed by users before sharing the style during a video chat.

Finally, the Messenger app has introduced some new augmented reality “masks” to video chats, allowing a greater variety of mask selections for users to choose from. Additionally, animated effects that react to a user’s movements, such as shooting stars and falling hearts, have been introduced in the update.

If you’re excited to try these new video chat features out yourself, they’re available in the newest Messenger update, available today.

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