The latest update to the encrypted messaging app Signal adds custom wallpapers and animated stickers, a feature familiar to WhatsApp, iMessage, and Facebook Messenger users

That's right Signal, once a professional information security tool for political dissidents and elites ("1337" to you), has gotten cute

Perhaps this was inevitable A business has to grow, even if it is a non-profit like the Signal Foundation Many of the millions of new users who have quit WhatsApp and switched to Signal in recent weeks would not last long if they could not use animations and emojis

But as much as I dislike emojis and stickers in general, these new bells and whistles are annoying They look as if they were made for first graders It's like having a Disney cartoon character in the middle of the fight scene in The Matrix dodging bullets

Uglyness aside, the animated stickers and wallpaper are easy to use Just tap the little smiley face icon on the Signal keyboard while typing a message to access all the emojis, stickers, animated stickers, animated GIFs, and bitmojis (whatever they are) you want

For the wallpaper, go into the settings menu from the home screen (three vertical dots in the upper right corner) and set Appearance > Chat Wallpaper > Wallpaper

You have a choice of 21 preset backgrounds - 12 monotone and 9 gradient - or you can alternatively get an image from your phone's gallery to use as a background You can also set a different background for each chat, which seems useful

The "About Me" field is a new field in the Profile section that allows you to "write a few words about yourself I prefer to leave it blank, but you can go there from Settings > Username > About Tapping it will add an emoji in addition to the blank field

Signal for iOS is also getting a setting to determine what type of media is downloaded when using cellular data or roaming data, matching a feature already present in the Android version There would be no objection to this