Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

We’ve all been there: you’re building a chat experience and end up spending way too much time on UI glue - message bubbles, room lists, typing indicators… all before you even get to the good part: real-time logic. So today, we’re launching a set of lightweight, flexible UI components built for React and powered by Ably Chat.

Today, we’re excited to introduce Message Reactions in Ably Chat - a quintessential part of any modern chat experience, now available as a native feature. How message reactions work Each reaction in Ably Chat is defined by a simple string, often a UTF-8 emoji like , but it could also be a tag (:like:) or text (+1). Reactions are aggregated in realtime based on their name.

In-app chat has gone from a nice-to-have to an essential product feature across gaming, SaaS, social, and live streaming apps. While it’s tempting to treat it as “just another feature,” the reality is that building chat touches nearly every layer of your stack - from low-latency delivery and message ordering to presence, typing indicators, moderation. And then there is operating at scale to consider.