They’re intended to work and look like your usual Discord or similar emoji reactions, as long as it’s between Gmail users:
To non-Gmail users, those reactions would appear as regular email replies with a big emoji:
I don’t know how to feel about it personally, it’s the kind of feature that seems completely detached from reality as that’s certainly not how most people use emails, and the only thing it will create is more email garbage filling up your inbox.
EDIT: The person who found about the feature first (assembledebug) also added how to enable it:
Ben forgot to mention how it can be enabled 🙂 ?
You need a rooted phone and need to flip a switch of a flag using GappsMod.
But why? Gmail (and email in general) is, to me, for long form communication and professional communication. Emoji are the opposite of that
came to the thread because I felt this exact same sentiment. Talk about a solution looking for the problem.