iOS 8 brought the Quick Reply feature to iPhones, the feature enabled users to respond to messages through the notification itself. This eliminated the need to switch back to the messaging app as users could easily reply from the notification that popped up on top of whatever app they were in. Even though it has been over a year since this feature has been available to iPhone owners WhatsApp has still not supported it, until now, Quick Reply is now available to WhatsApp users.
It’s not entirely WhatsApp’s fault though, initially Apple kept this feature locked to its own messaging application, however with iOS 9 the company allowed third-party applications to tap into Quick Reply.
WhatsApp has now been updated to support Quick Reply, bear in mind that the feature will only work for those who have a compatible device running iOS 9.1, it doesn’t work on iOS 9.0 or incremental releases that came out before iOS 9.1.
It has only been a few days since iOS 9.1 was released for compatible devices, the update brings several improvements for features like Live Photos and even adds a ton of new emojis which will certainly making messaging quite fun on iOS 9.1.
That’s the only caveat there is to this latest update, those who are running iOS 9.1 can easily use the notifications to reply to WhatsApp messages, thereby making it much easier for them to continue conversations without having to switch applications repeatedly.