[Feature Request] Improvements to Reactions UX

[michaelschufi]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

I love the new reaction feature! Reacting to messages is the perfect way to quickly communicate what you feel, doing a "+1"-voting without having to start a poll, or use it in some other way.

However, in Telegram there is one thing that feels cumbersome and frankly unnecessary. The work needed to react to some message is just annoying.

I'm using Slack every day and Slack does, in my opinion, a few things better regarding reactions. I will describe the suggestions below.

Describe the solution you'd like

• Immediately show the reaction bar on hover. Why wait? The reaction component is not overlapping the message text, and I only hover the message if I want to interact with it in a way. As the user is already moving the mouse, it is easy to move it away from the message again.

• Immediately show the reaction options without having to first move the mouse to a reaction you don't even want to send.

• Not having to scroll to select all the reactions. I don't understand why for 16 reactions a single column list is used instead for example a 4x4 grid. We are on a desktop device after all and there is enough space to either extend the list and/or add columns.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Setting flags could be introduced if both behaviours are desirable. (There is for example #23935)
• Showing the most commonly/recently used reactions immediately, and hiding the less commonly/recently used ones scroll/click.

Additional context

Slack does the following:

1. It shows your 3 preferred reactions immediately and shows a "React" button to open the emoji selector.
2. In this selector it shows you first, the most commonly used or useful emojis.
3. It uses a big panel in which you can select the preferred emoji you want to react with.

I am not saying Telegram should do the same here, but it shows how fast and simple it is for the user to react how they intend.

[rashidpathiyil]

I am facing the exact problem, it's feel really hard to react to a message.

Please improve it as @michaelschufi mentioned

Immediately show the reaction bar Add + icon for more in a 4x4 box instead of scroll

[farwayer]

Reaction selection is really unusable because of this

I don't understand why for 16 reactions a single column list

especially on touchpads. Sometimes it is faster to take smartphone and react there :smile:

[john-preston]

@farwayer You can right click the message and see them in a grid.

[michaelschufi]

The right click solution still needs more clicks than Slack's solution. Also, I think the right click grid could just simply be bigger. It should be responsive to the window's size. If I have my Telegram window in full screen (secondary monitor) I still only get a 7 columns wide grid.

Also, I think you might sell more Telegram subscriptions/emoji packs if reactions were more easily accessible.

[farwayer]

@john-preston thx you saved my life :sweat_smile:

[ohhai]

Came here to ask for the same — please make reactions initially open in the big grid. Current one-dimensional stripe requires either time to scroll or one more click (total two) every time when you want some other reaction than top four.

Desktop screen has enough space, so the best case seems following for me:

• Hovering reaction button opens big grid immediately (with no additional clicks).
• Right click shows context menu together with big grid immediately.
• Big grid contains all the basic reactions (currently it's couple of lines shorter).

Some of this could be implemented as an option requiring to set one checkbox in settings once.

Verified on Telegram 4.14.4 from https://desktop.telegram.org

[AndydeCleyre]

I'm here most of all for:

I don't understand why for 16 reactions a single column list is used instead for example a 4x4 grid.

It's very tedious to find certain of my most-used reactions this way.

Though reading this thread I learned about the possibility of getting a big grid, thanks! (move and hover over message, right-click, find and move to hover over down arrow, click) -- but it would be great to get that big grid immediately when hovering over the message.