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WhatsApp just announced that it has released desktop applications for Mac (OS X) and PC (Windows). The Facebook-owned company said that this will give you “a new way to stay in touch any time and anywhere”, except that folks in the know have already been using WhatsApp Web for 16 months now on Android, or eight months if you’re on an iPhone. In any case, just head on over to https://www.whatsapp.com/download/ to download the specific version you need for your computer, since it’s available for almost all popular operating systems you can think off except Linux.
Once installed, you’ll simply need to go to WhatsApp’s settings on the phone, select WhatsApp Web, and scan the QR code showing on the desktop client.
WhatsApp for desktop runs on Mac OS X 10.9+ and Windows 8+ but before you get too excited that you can finally run WhatsApp on several devices independently, here’s the kicker — it is just a glorified web app. In fact, even WhatsApp itself said that just like WhatsApp Web, the new desktop client is simply an extension of your mobile phone, and that the app only mirrors chats, conversations, and messages from smartphone’s WhatsApp.
This unfortunately means that you still can only run WhatsApp on one smartphone, and just like WhatsApp Web, you can only run an instance of WhatsApp for desktop, at a time. This so-called native application also doesn’t seem to have an auto-update component unlike Telegram or Viber, and if that’s true, the only way to “update” the client is go back to the download page to get the latest version of WhatsApp for desktop. To rub it in further, WhatsApp for desktop also doesn’t have a way to minimize the application to the status bar / system tray; you’ll just have to keep the window opened or minimized to be able to receive WhatsApp notifications.
There is a reason why WhatsApp chose to go this route as opposed to a username-password login system like its cousin Facebook Messenger — end-to-end encryption. Encryption demands that both ends of the communication have the decryption keys, and it could be extremely difficult for WhatsApp to keep the end-to-end encryption working, if it wants its service to work on multiple smartphones and computers of a single user, simultaneously.
But if you must, here are some advantages of having a desktop WhatsApp application as opposed to WhatsApp Web. With its own client, WhatsApp is able to make sure that its desktop notifications work without fuss; browser notifications are not as straightforward to enable for normal users. The company said that a standalone application also allows better keyboard shortcuts that wouldn’t otherwise work on a browser tab. Speaking of browsers and tabs, as I’m writing this, the WhatsApp client on the Mac is only using 39.1 MB of memory, whereas WhatsApp Web on a Chrome tab is eating up 64 MB.
To download WhatsApp for the desktop (or any other platform of your choice (except Linux), visit: https://www.whatsapp.com/download/.
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