Guide
Access WhatsApp Web on iPad in two clicks
by Dominik Bärlocher
WhatsApp on the iPad: New feature discovered in beta app
31.7.2019
Translation: machine translated
A watch blog has discovered that WhatsApp is working on an iPad app. The messenger wants to close the gap between phones and smart devices. And solve a long-standing problem with synchronisation.
WhatsApp is the most used messenger service in the world. iPads are the most used tablets in the world. WhatsApp is not available on the iPad. Or if there is, then with a somewhat hacky workaround solution.
WhatsApp now wants to put an end to this. According to WhatsApp watchblog WABetaInfo, the Facebook-owned messenger is said to be working on an app that brings WhatsApp to your iPad.
A question of synchronisation
Few details are known. While the app has been played out in Apple's Test Flight, a portal for developers, in version 2.19.40, the app has not yet been released to the wider user base. If you want to test the still unfinished feature, you have to become a WhatsApp beta tester, but the beta programme is usually full.
In the initial analysis, WABetaInfo only showed a few screenshots of the app for iPad. It looks just like WhatsApp, but doesn't reinvent itself. This is hardly surprising, because the big problem with the port lies in WhatsApp's basic functionality. WhatsApp uses your phone number as a unique identifier, not a separately defined account like Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts. Your phone number is tied to your phone and can only be used on multiple devices with great effort. This hurdle is one of the last big gaps in the networked world: the gap between phone number-based services and smart services. Google, Samsung and Apple are making an effort to close the gap, but a standard has not yet been established.
WhatsApp Web mirrors the messages on your smartphone, but does not talk to WhatsApp's servers itself. One of the reasons for this is that WhatsApp messages are stored on your smartphone, not on a WhatsApp server. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp does not want to break this, but WhatsApp should still be able to work on the iPad without a connection to the smartphone. According to WABetaInfo, the synchronisation should work in a rather strange way: The synchronisation should take place between server and device 1 and between server and device 2 and not server → device 1 (smartphone) → device 2 (PC, tablet...). This implies that the messages are stored on a server, but does not necessarily mean that this is the case. WhatsApp messages are travelling through the internet anyway, passing through WhatsApp's servers somewhere, which act as a relay and not as storage. This explains the failure in June 2019. Previously, the server's relay had a 1:1 relationship, i.e. a server talks to a phone. The phone then mirrors the messages to other devices. WhatsApp now seems to be working on a 1:n relationship, one server to any number of devices. The relay would then be less of a rail and more of a switch.
Release date unknown
When WhatsApp will be available on the iPad is still unknown. WABetaInfo writes that the features are being tested, but there is no plan yet as to when they will be rolled out.
Until then, the "WhatsApp Web on iPad" hack will work.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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