After achieving massive success with its mobile application, the social media giant WhatsApp is planning to strengthen its desktop presence and thereby become active in almost every space a user inhabits throughout the day from home to the office.
Facebook owned messaging service WhatsApp is reportedly working with Microsoft to deliver a proper desktop app. WhatsApp is one of the few developers that consistently delivered updates to its Windows Phone app, but a report by Windows Central suggests WhatsApp is actually getting ready to deliver a proper desktop app as well.
Over the years, there has been a huge demand for a native WhatsApp client for Windows computers. The idea of using a proper PC setup for chatting with your pals certainly appeals to many, even the developers themselves. However, there hasn’t been any dedicated app yet but the web client has been useful. It seems now that it’s about to change.
Concept art for a Universal Windows platform (UWP) version of WhatsApp showed up on Behance before being promptly removed. It appeared to be a native Windows app with UWP design tenets like acrylic transparency, the report said.
The report mentions that one of the developers uploaded a concept art image depicting a WhatsApp app for Windows 10. In the concept art design which shows the readers page showed the app following a familiar design layout to the existing WhatsApp Web client — the list of chats on one side with the contents on the other half. However, the app is dressed in Microsoft’s Fluent Design elements, with minimalist flat surfaces.
While the app would be “universal”, images from the desktop version seem to indicate that, on such devices, the app would function similarly to WhatsApp desktop, only serving to access to the service through a connection with a mobile device.
Not to be confused with WhatsApp web and the new project. To be clear, WhatsApp already has a desktop app but that is just a web version of its core mobile offering. WhatsApp Web lacks several crucial features like voice and video calling. According to reports, the new UWP app shows call buttons in concept images, suggesting it will have telephony capabilities.
However, the bitter-sweet news is that the upcoming Windows app of WhatsApp would still require the QR Code system to make the messaging portal operational. This makes sense though, as WhatsApp accounts are inextricably tied to phone numbers, and the company has given no indication of changing that.
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