WhatsApp has finally rolled out a web client version of its popular mobile messaging application for desktop users.
“Our web client is simply an extension of your phone: the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device – this means all of your messages still live on your phone,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.
WhatsApp announced that its new desktop version will currently be available only on Google Chrome browser. However, it confirmed that support for other browsers will be added soon. Furthermore, WhatsApp Web will not be available for iOS users due to Apple platform limitations.
“Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations,” it wrote.
To connect a web browser to the WhatsApp client, users will be required to open https://web.whatsapp.com in Chrome, where they will find a QR code. Once the code is scanned, users can access their WhatsApp account on the desktop, which has been paired with the mobile version.
It is to be noted that the user’s phone needs to remain connected to the internet for WhatsApp’s web client to work. The company recommends users to install the latest version of the app before pairing the mobile and desktop versions of the platform.
WhatsApp, which currently has around 700m mobile users sending 30 billion messages per day, was acquired by Facebook last year for a whopping $19bn (£12.6bn).
