WhatsApp finally arrives on the desktop as a web app

 

Update: For all of you with an Android phone who could not find the WhatsApp Web option yesterday, that was because you where one version behind. The new version 2.11.498 can be downloaded here and I guarantee it works. Just download the new version on your Android phone, install it, open the app, click on the menu (upper right corner where there are three squares one on top of each other), select WhatsApp Web, open a browser (Chrome or any other plug-in based) on the desktop computer you want to connect to your account, enter https://web.whatsapp.com/, and with your phone from the WhatsApp Web option, scan the QR code on your computer screen.
 
If you’re one of the 700 million people that use WhatsApp and you also have a desktop or notebook, you’ll probably be interested to learn that the Facebook-owned company has finally released a web-based client.
 
WhatsApp for the web is, once again, a web-based client so there isn’t a dedicated program that you download onto your computer. To get started, simply head over to the WhatsApp Web page using Google Chrome as your browser and scan the QR code using the WhatsApp app on your phone to log in.
 

 

That may seem like a weird requirement – and I suppose it is – but that's because WhatsApp uses your phone number for user verifications instead of a username / password. This also pairs WhatsApp on your phone with the WhatsApp web client because, after all, the WhatsApp web client is simply an extension of the phone app.
 
That means all of your conversations are still kept on your phone and what’s more, you’ll need to keep your phone connected to the Internet during your WhatsApp web session. We've been using the web app for a couple of hours since it launched and it's working smoothly.
 
The process is said to work on Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone but not iOS due to what CEO Jan Koum described as Apple platform limitations. A spokesperson for WhatsApp told The Verge that a web client for iOS was in the works but the timeframe for its arrival was unclear.
 
~ Shawn Knight

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