WhatsApp desktop app gives you a new way to stay in touch anytime and anywhere - whether on your phone or computer at home or work.

The desktop app is available for Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8 and macOS 10.9 or higher, and is synced with WhatsApp on your mobile device. Because the app runs natively on your desktop, you'll have support for native desktop notifications, better keyboard shortcuts, and more.

Upon downloading and opening the app, scan the QR code using the WhatsApp app on your phone (look for WhatsApp Web menu under Settings). Just like WhatsApp Web, the new desktop app lets you message with friends and family while your phone stays in your pocket.

WhatsApp is available for mobile platforms Android and iPhone / iOS.

Features

• No hidden costs: Once you and your friends download the application, you can use it to chat as much as you want. Send a million messages a day to your friends for free! WhatsApp uses your Internet connection: 3G/EDGE or Wi-Fi when available.
• Multimedia: Send Video, Images, and Voice notes to your friends and contacts.
• Group Chat: Enjoy group conversations with your contacts. Add or Remove group participants, change group subject and set a group icon.
• Personal: Set a profile photo which will be shown to all your contacts
• No international charges: Just like there is no added cost to send an international email, there is no cost to send WhatsApp messages internationally. Chat with your friends all over the world as long as they have WhatsApp Messenger installed and avoid those pesky international SMS costs.
• Say no to pins and usernames: Why even bother having to remember yet another PIN or username? WhatsApp works with your phone number, just like SMS would, and integrates flawlessly with your existing phone address book.
• No need to log in/out: No more confusion about getting logged off from another computer or device. With push notifications WhatsApp is always on and always connected.
• No need to add buddies: Your Address Book is used to automatically connect you with your contacts. Your contacts who already have WhatsApp Messenger will be automatically displayed under Favorites, similar to a buddy list.
• Offline Messages: Even if you miss your push notifications or turn off your iPhone, WhatsApp will save your messages offline until you retrieve them during the next application use.
• And much more: Share location and places, Exchange contacts, Custom wallpaper, Custom notification sounds, Landscape mode, Message timestamps, Email chat history, Broadcast messages and media to many contacts at once, and much much more.

What's New

WhatsApp has just now extended the time you have to delete your messages from your chats after you hit send to 2 days 12 hours. The have also improved privacy by adding more options to hide your online status, block screenshots for view once messages and now you can quietly leave groups without other participants knowing.

Previous release notes

• Updates to messages reactions including the ability to react with any emoji plus additional improvements and fixes.
• Increased the group participant limit to 512
• Increased max file size limit to 2GB
• On group calls, you can mute others or message them by long pressing on their tile

Reactions, 2GB File Sharing, 512 Groups

As we announced last month with our vision for Communities on WhatsApp, we're now building for organizations, businesses, and other close-knit groups to communicate securely and get things done on WhatsApp. The feedback we've received so far has been very positive and we can't wait to get many new features into people's hands.

We're excited to share that emoji reactions are now available on the latest version of the app. Reactions are fun, fast, and they reduce overload in groups too. We'll continue improving them by adding an even broader range of expressions in the future.

In addition, you can now send files within WhatsApp up to 2GB in size at a time, protected by end-to-end encryption. This is an increase from the previous limit of 100MB and we think will be helpful for collaboration among small businesses and school groups. We recommend using WiFi for larger files and we'll display a counter while uploading or downloading to let you know how long your transfer will take.

One of the top requests we've consistently received is the option to add more people to a chat, so now we're slowly rolling out the ability to add up to 512 people to a group. Building private, safe, and secure communities takes work and we think this series of improvements will help people and groups stay close to one another.

We hope people enjoy these updates and look forward to sharing more throughout the year.

WhatsApp desktop app no longer requires your phone to be online

We're excited to announce that private and secure one-to-one voice and video calls are now available on WhatsApp's desktop app.

Throughout the last year we've seen significant increases in people calling one another on WhatsApp, often for long conversations. Last New Year's Eve, we broke the record for the most calls ever made in a single day with 1.4 billion voice and video calls. With so many people still apart from their loved ones, and adjusting to new ways of working, we want conversations on WhatsApp to feel as close to in-person as possible, regardless of where you are in the world or the tech you're using.

Answering on a bigger screen makes it easier to work with colleagues, see your family more clearly on a bigger canvas, or free up your hands to move around a room while talking. To make desktop calling more useful, we made sure it works seamlessly for both portrait and landscape orientation, appears in a resizable standalone window on your computer screen, and is set to be always on top so you never lose your video chats in a browser tab or stack of open windows.

Voice and video calls on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted, so WhatsApp can't hear or see them, whether you call from your phone or your computer. We're starting with one-to-one calls on the WhatsApp desktop app so we make sure we can give you a reliable and high-quality experience. We will be expanding this feature to include group voice and video calls in the future.

You can make free voice and video calls to your contacts on WhatsApp Desktop if you have the app installed on your computer.

Desktop calling is supported on:

• Windows 10 64-bit version 1903 and newer
• macOS 10.13 and newer

To make or receive calls on WhatsApp Desktop, you'll need:

• An audio output device and microphone for voice and video calls.
• A camera for video calls.
• An active internet connection on your computer and phone. The call won't go through your phone, but it needs to be online to establish the call.
• To grant WhatsApp permission to access your computer's microphone and camera. WhatsApp needs access to your computer's microphone for calls and camera for video calls.

Note: Group calls aren't supported on WhatsApp Desktop at this time.

Previous release notes:

We've heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There's been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts.

WhatsApp was built on a simple idea: what you share with your friends and family stays between you. This means we will always protect your personal conversations with end-to-end encryption, so that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can see these private messages. It's why we don't keep logs of who everyone's messaging or calling. We also can't see your shared location and we don't share your contacts with Facebook.

With these updates, none of that is changing. Instead, the update includes new options people will have to message a business on WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data. While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it's important people are aware of these services. This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook.

We're now moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms. No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8. We're also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp. We'll then go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15.

WhatsApp helped bring end-to-end encryption to people across the world and we are committed to defending this security technology now and in the future. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to us and to so many who have helped spread facts and stop rumors. We will continue to put everything we have into making WhatsApp the best way to communicate privately.