WhatsApp is a great alternative to iMessage, except in one regard: iMessage lets you send messages from your Mac. That means if you hate tapping in text messages on a touchscreen, you can use your keyboard instead.
But that’s changed. The long-awaited ability to use WhatsApp on your Mac has finally arrived. But there’s a caveat: It only works if you don’t have an iPhone.
The WhatsApp desktop client is a Web app that allows users to communicate with their contacts right through the desktop. Technically, it works on more than just the desktop: It also runs on Android and Windows devices, although curiously not iOS.
What we’re interested in, though, is the Mac support. WhatsApp won’t work on Safari — the WhatsApp team hints such support may be coming soon — but it does work on the latest versions of Chrome.
Once you load up the WhatsApp Web client by visiting web.whatsapp.com in Chrome, it’s easy to set up … if you have an Android, BlackBerry or Windows phone, that is. Just load up the app on your smartphone, scan the QR code and voila: WhatsApp in your desktop browser.
So why doesn’t this work on the iPhone? Simply put, the scanning option hasn’t been added to the iPhone version of WhatsApp yet, which puts desktop WhatsApp just out of reach for some Apple fans.
But be patient. Hopefully, we’re just an app update away from never having to load up WhatsApp on our iPhones again.
Via: iDownloadBlog
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
10 responses to “You can now use WhatsApp on your Mac, but there’s a catch”
The fact it doesn’t work on an iPhone has nothing to do with the scanning option in WhatsApp, but is the result of limitations in iOS. WhatsApp doesn’t store messages on its servers (in contrast to iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Telegram etc.), so your smartphone has to establish a connection with WhatsApp Web in order to use it. The smartphone still handles the messaging and the web app provides a mirror and nothing else. Unfortunately sandboxing in iOS doesn’t allow this kind of connections.
So chances of iOS support in the near future are pretty low.
Thats a real bummer
Love your abuser!
in china i can use wechat on IOS and my mac. wechat is basically identical to whatsapp and has several hundred million users, mostly in china.
Scanning options… Do you need to be a tech blogger to get to this elaborated conclusion or just a fanboy?
Not really bothered actually. We have Email, iMessage, SMS and Facetime as well as Twitter DM and Facebook DM. Anything else is superfluous.
What a croq
who are using Android with Mac?
I am having problem connecting to web.WhatsApp! I am getting redirect loop?!
useless