Feature: Support sending as stickers in WhatsApp

[touzainanboku]

When used in WhatsApp, stickers get sent as images and not stickers. I've tested with both .webp and .png files. I'm assuming there is a way to make this work, since apps like Gboard are able to send stuff as stickers.

[FredHappyface]

Not going to look at this because I've done a bit of research and can't come up with any way of doing so. However, you are welcome to take a look and open a Merge Request

(Going forward, can you fill in the template? - it's not there to be ignored. Thanks)

[MicaelJarniac]

Came here looking for this. Any chance you could take another look now, since it's been quite some time?

[FredHappyface]

Hey unfortunately it's very much a WhatsApp problem. Basically even though they accept image/webp the inputtext (basically how images are sent) incorrectly only supports image/webp.wasticker or some variant.

[jakobwuhrer]

Would you be open to merging a workaround, something along the lines of sending .wasticker files with mime type image/webp.wasticker?

[FredHappyface]

Potentially.

If this is something someone else wants to take on then yes even if I'm not keen on adding loads of exceptions for misbehaving apps. That said if it's relatively simple and improves functionality then go for it!

Alternatively, I'm happy to reopen this issue and look at it when I have more time (life is super busy and honestly working around a Facebook bug is pretty low priority for me, and not all that fun given that I do this for a hobby)

[FredHappyface]

Spent a couple hours hitting my head against a whatsapp shaped wall on this one. Attempted to set the mime for any webp to the one whatsapp expects - this worked for non-animated webps only. Animated weps failed to show up altogether so unfortunately going to close this as wontfix

[jakobwuhrer]

Thanks for taking a look! WhatsApp has quite strict file size and resolution restrictions for (animated) stickers, so I think you've been running into that, see https://github.com/WhatsApp/stickers/tree/main/Android

I personally use https://github.com/laggykiller/sticker-convert to convert gifs / other files / stickers from various sources into a format & size that whatsapp accepts, and I run a slightly modified version of ewesticker that sends webp images with the the image/webp.wasticker mime type - this works for me, but I don't know how good of a general solution that is

[FredHappyface]

Might be able to revisit and add a toggle for this? Part of my concern is users who don't understand the file limitations and blame EweSticker for WhatsApps jank behaviour with this. The idea should be that it's hard to get unexpected behaviour. That said I think I've come round to adding those power user toggles providing that the implementation is simple enough (the other concern is maintaining a load of code paths)

Yet to use the laggykiller sticker-convert stuff but looks really good. I'd written tstickers a while ago which I've been using but definitely wanna give that a whirl :)

Unfortunately challenging to give a timeframe on this due to various life commitments

How have you found your fork? Are you noticing any strange behaviour?

Thanks ❤️