Messaging apps are a splintered mess, with everyone using different systems to talk to one another. But if there’s one messaging app you can almost guarantee anyone from teenagers to seniors will have installed on their smartphones, it’s WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is a messaging service that’s part of the Meta stable, owned by the same company as Facebook. It’s great for sending texts, photos, videos and other files, and you can talk with people one-on-one or in groups. It’s also used for voice and video calls, making it much more versatile than SMS. It’s a fairly straightforward app to install and use, but it has its quirks, as you’ll see.
What Is WhatsApp Used For?
WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular messaging services, and that ubiquity is one of its greatest strengths.
Whereas rival service iMessage only works on AppleAAPL -0.5% devices, WhatsApp is near-universal: it works on iPhones, Android, Windows PCs, Macs and from the web browser. In fact, you’ll do well to find a modern computing device that can’t access WhatsApp.
It’s not only available on billions of devices, it’s available worldwide. And unlike services such as SMS, there’s no extra charge for messaging someone in a different country. As long as you’ve got an active data connection, you can message anyone on the network.
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If a simple text message isn’t enough, you can make voice and video calls via WhatsApp, too, and once again this is a neat way of avoiding hideous international call charges.
If the person you’re calling isn’t available for a live chat, you can leave voice and video messages for them, saving you from having to bash out long messages on a smartphone keyboard.
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Photos, GIFs, documents, contacts and other files can also be sent via WhatsApp. And if you’re meeting someone in real life, you can even use WhatsApp to share your live location with them, helping you to locate one another at crowded events such as concerts or sports matches
In a few countries—such as India, Brazil and Singapore—you can even use WhatsApp to make payments to businesses or send money to friends and family, by linking your bank account to the service.
How Does WhatsApp Work?
Although you don’t always need a phone to use it, your WhatsApp account is linked to your cell phone number. Your account is tied to your phone number and, if you buy a new phone, you can only have WhatsApp running on one phone at a time.
Once you’ve downloaded the app (see below) and registered for an account, the app will suck in all of your phone’s contacts. You’ll then be able to see which of your contacts also have WhatsApp and be able to message them directly from within the app. A relatively recently introduced feature also lets you send WhatsApp messages to people who aren’t already in your contacts.
You’ll need an active data connection to use WhatsApp, but it can use either cellular data or Wi-Fi. You can also use WhatsApp simultaneously on multiple devices. So, you can have the WhatsApp app running on your computer and your phone, with messages staying automatically in sync between the two.
There are limitations on the browser-based version of WhatsApp, sometimes referred to as WhatsApp Web. In this version, you cannot make voice or video calls—you’ll have to download the full apps for Mac or Windows for that.
There are also limitations when it comes to editing messages. You can only edit a WhatsApp message for 15 minutes after it’s been sent. If you miss that editing window, you can still delete the message, although the recipient may of course have read the message by then. Two blue ticks alongside the message shows the recipient has seen it, or that everyone in a group has read it.
Talking of groups, there’s a slightly confusing hierarchy of WhatsApp categories that you need to be aware of. These are:
- Channels—updates pushed out by organizations such as Forbes, The New York Times NYT +0.9% or the BBC. These are one-way message channels—you cannot reply to them, beyond emojis on posts. You can subscribe to WhatsApp channels via the Updates section of the WhatsApp app.
- Communities—these are similar to channels, but are designed for smaller organizations such as sports clubs or neighborhoods. Everyone can send messages in communities, but admin messages are given greater prominence.
- Groups—designed for small groups or friends, where everyone can contribute and there’s no real hierarchy, although admins can kick people from a group.
With all this activity, you can soon find you’ve got lots of useful messages trapped in WhatsApp, so it’s wise to back them up. If you move to a new phone without backups, you will lose all of your previous messages, which can be enormously inconvenient. To create backups, open the WhatsApp settings, click Chats and then Chat backup to explore the various options, including creating automatic daily backups.
Is WhatsApp Safe?
No messaging app is flawless or immune from attack. But WhatsApp does have a number of strong security features that should keep your messages relatively safe.
The key protection is end-to-end encryption. In a nutshell, this ensures that WhatsApp itself can’t read the content of messages (with some exceptions) and neither can anyone who intercepts the data on the internet connection you’re using. End-to-end encryption is automatically applied to every one-on-one or group conversation on WhatsApp, so you don’t have to worry about switching it on.
Voice and video calls are also encrypted, so there’s no real danger of those being tapped either.
However, it would be unwise to assume anything said in a WhatsApp conversation could never leak. Anyone who is a member of a WhatsApp conversation can export all the messages and media from a conversation, for example, and publish it elsewhere. Participants can take screenshots and share those. Voice or video conversations could be recorded by another device.
In short, there’s a danger that anything you post on WhatsApp could easily escape the confines of the service. It’s not a place to share highly sensitive personal information or confidential business data.
It’s also unwise to assume that details of your WhatsApp conversations are never going to be shared with law-enforcement agencies or other third parties. This WhatsApp information page explains what information may be shared with law-enforcement agencies, which includes your name, IP addresses the app has been used from, group memberships, contacts and your email address.
It’s also worth noting that although WhatsApp doesn’t store messages once they’ve been delivered, it can store undelivered messages for up to 30 days.
How To Download WhatsApp
WhatsApp is simple to download and install from the major app stores for mobile and desktop, as explained below. You don’t even need to install it to use WhatsApp on a computer.
As explained above, it’s also possible to have WhatsApp installed on multiple devices simultaneously, meaning you don’t have to fish your phone out of your pocket every time you receive a message.
Downloading WhatsApp For Mobile
WhatsApp is free to download from both the iPhone App Store and Android’s Google Play Store. Just click the links provided and follow the installation instructions on your device.
WhatsApp will run on pretty much any iPhone or Android handset that’s still supported, so you don’t need to worry about system requirements.
You can only use WhatsApp on one phone at a time, so if you have both Android and iOS devices, install the app on your primary phone.
WhatsApp contacts will be populated automatically from your phone’s contacts, although you will probably need to give the app permission to access your contacts first.
The mobile app has a number of privacy features that are worth exploring by opening Settings, then clicking on Privacy. For example, you can limit who sees your profile picture, you can turn off read receipts (ie. when other people know you’ve read their message), and you can even set a default timer that makes your messages disappear from chats after a set period of time.
Once you’ve got everything set up as you like it, press the green chat bubble and you can start a new conversation, a new group or even a new community. If your friends are already in a WhatsApp group that you’d like to join, you’ll have to ask one of them to invite you to the group.
Downloading WhatsApp For Desktop
There are free WhatsApp apps for Windows and Mac, which you can download from here.
It’s a very basic app that should run on any computer and you can have WhatsApp installed on both Macs and Windows PCs at the same time.
If you’re using a work computer or someone else’s PC, you don’t even need to install the app. WhatsApp Web can be used from any web browser, and a relatively recent change means you can use it in more than one web browser too. You’ll need to scan a QR code from the WhatsApp app on your phone to set this up, but it only takes a few seconds.
Just remember to log out from the session if you’re using a shared computer once you’re done. You can do this by clicking the three dots icon in the left-hand pane of WhatsApp Web and selecting Log out.
You don’t need to worry about syncing messages between mobile and desktop, all of that is handled automatically. However, there are some features missing from the desktop and WhatsApp Web versions.
You can’t share your location from the desktop apps, for example, and communities are not yet supported. On WhatsApp Web, you can’t make video or phone calls.
Bottom Line
It’s easy to see why WhatsApp is so popular: it’s free, used everywhere, available on almost any device and it’s relatively secure. Never assume the contents of a WhatsApp conversation will remain entirely private, however, and don’t use it to share highly sensitive information.
