Official Whats App Web Realease
Are you one of the 600 million people on WhatsApp? Do you grow tired of having to type all of your messages through your phone? Good news!
There’s now a desktop version. It’s a web app rather than a native client — and for now, at least, it seems to only play friendly with Google Chrome.
As you may have imagined, this allows you to use your computer to send and receive WhatsApp messages. But, true to this app’s very obvious “mobile first” mantra, the Web client is acting simply as an extension of your phone.
Installation
First, go to Whats App Web Home page in you chrome browser (WhatsApp says you should use Chrome. Other browsers may work, but to be 100% sure you’ll need to go with Google’s offering for now):
To log in on the desktop, you have to take a picture of a QR code through WhatsApp on your phone. This is necessary, presumably, because WhatsApp uses your phone number and SMS verifications rather than usernames/passwords. This currently works on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry… but “due to Apple platform limitations” (WhatsApp’s words, there — we’re not sure what limitations they mean), iOS users are left out in the cold.
On the platforms where it works, however, it’s very slick.
Curiously, it seems as if it’s using your phone for more than just the initial login; note the orange warning in the screenshot below. If your phone dies, so does your WhatsApp web connection.
Note: Instructions for all mobile platforms are provided on the WhatsApp Web page. If you don’t have that option in the app on your mobile device yet, then either you’re not running the latest version or the company hasn’t enabled the new feature for your account. This seems to be a staged rollout of sorts, so if you’re in this situation a bit of patience will help.
