What's New WeChat: Sticker Organization, Quoting Comes to PC, and Crypto-RMB Tests Begin

Cut the chit-chat and gather around to learn the latest about everyone's favorite super-app in our ongoing column, What's New WeChat.

For the sticker socialites

Rejoice, ye sticky scoundrels! Gone are the days of tedious sticker deletion, when we were denied even the thought of organizing our carefully curated selection of 300 gifs.

With the latest update, WeChat has finally implemented an easy-to-use "Move to Front" option. Whereas previously, pressing and holding on a sticker in your saved collection would magnify the sticker until you remove your finger, the magnification pop-up now persists when you let go. Below the pop-up, the option to “Move to Front” is on the left, while "delete" is on the right, thus doing away with the need to go into the "Manage" section to delete stickers, which can be accessed by pressing the plus symbol at the beginning of your sticker collection.

However, if you want to do some major reorganization, the "Manage" section now has the move to the front option as well, making it easy to select and move multiple stickers at the same time.

Less functionally, the update also revamps the visuals for voice-messages, giving a slightly improved experience to those who feel they are entitled to make you listen to their voice.

For the PC people

Speaking of voice messages (... get it?), WeChat for PC has received a major update as well, and one new feature allows users to automatically convert voice messages to text (Settings > General > Auto-convert voice messages to text).

Unfortunately, the actual conversion function has not been updated to support non-Mandarin languages, despite the fact that voice-to-text function in mobile WeChat works perfectly well for English. Strangely enough, the PC conversion will actually recognize most English words but will fail to add spaces between them.

On the other hand, the new drag-to-share function that allows users to highlight multiple messages and drag them to another chat makes forwarding chat history even easier than on mobile. Quoting has also been updated to match the under-message style of mobile, doing away with in-message quotes once and for all.

For the crypto-curious

The digital currency being developed by China’s Central Bank appears to have moved into the testing phase, and screenshots of the app that will be used to convert and trade the virtual RMB have been shared across social media.

Integration of the app with WeChat is expected in the future given Tencent's cooperative role in the currency's development, while competitor Alipay has been surprisingly excluded from the project.

Testing is now underway in four major Chinese cities, and while Beijingers, unfortunately, will not join in on the tests, the Xiong'an New Area, which serves as the central area of the Jing-Jin-Ji super metropolis, has made the list, along with Chengdu, Suzhou, and tech capital Shenzhen. 

The project has sparked an international conversation about whether or not nations should develop their own blockchain currency and how they might differ from independent currencies. The digital RMB will use only a partial blockchain architecture that will allow it to process up to 300,000 transactions per second, compared to currencies like Libra that can only handle about 1,000 transactions per second.

READ: WeChat is Watching You: Quick Takeaways From WeChat's 2019 Stats Review

Images: Bloomberg, Joey Knotts, Ling Zhang (via Twitter)