It is possible to search for reactions in individual chats and also globally.
If a user enters an emoji in the search field, emojis in the chat text and reactions are displayed separately from each other.
Actual behavior
There is no search for reactions in DC.
It is already possible to search for emojis in DC-Desktop and DC-Android.
In DC-iOS this only works in a chat and not globally.
Explanation
This feature would allow reactions to be used in a more versatile way.
On the one hand, a user could comment a message.
On the other hand, a reaction could be used like a shared label to mark a certain message.
Tagged like this, it could be found more easily by everyone later.
Smileys would be less suitable for this, but rather stars or colored dots, which are otherwise rarely used for reactions.
Some users forward important messages to “Saved Messages”.
Reactions could also be used there to categorize messages and thus make them easier to find again.
This would not require any changes in the UI, apart from a section for reactions in addition to those for chats, contacts and messages in the search results.
In WhatsApp, messages can be marked as favorites with a star, but these marks cannot be shared with other contacts.
As far as I know, DC would be the only messenger with such a feature.
Ok, it’s not quite the same. The tags in Telegram can only be used in “Saved Messages”.
Originally I wanted to suggest tags that are independent of reactions.
But the development effort would have been too high and reactions together with tags on a speech bubble would make the chat look messy.
Because reactions will be introduced soon, I thought that they would also be suitable as tags.
Emojis, which are otherwise rarely used for reactions, would be ideal for this.
For example:
Many file managers and email programs use such icons as tags.
This solution would have several advantages:
The UI does not need to be changed.
Messages could be marked for everyone to see in a chat and not just in “Saved Messages”.
In “Saved Messages”, messages can be managed similar to Telegram, without others being able to see the tags.
The large range of emojis would be better utilized. Otherwise, only relatively few would be used for reactions.
However, in order to use reactions as described above, it must be possible to search for them, both globally and within a chat. Except for DC-iOS, users can search for emojis.
After entering an emoji into the search field, DC would have to display reactions in a separate section in addition to the emojis.
Although it would not be possible to use words as tags like in Telegram, workarounds are conceivable. For example, users could create their own group chat with just themselves and a suitable name as tag, or they could agree with their contacts to use hashtags in the chat in order to find certain messages more quickly using the search.
TLDR: Actually, this proposal is just about enabling the search for reactions so that they can also be used as tags.
