WhatsApp Launches Native App for Mac
WhatsApp has announced the launch of a new native app for Mac. This app allows users to participate in video calls with up to eight people and audio calls with up to 32 people.
Mark Zuckerberg shared the news about the app’s release on his Facebook account. Users can download the app from WhatsApp’s website, and the company has mentioned that the macOS client will soon be available on the Apple App Store as well.
The redesigned app aims to provide familiarity to Mac users, enabling them to be more productive when using WhatsApp on a large screen. Some of the new features include the ability to easily share files by dragging and dropping them into a chat, as well as an expanded view of chat history.
WhatsApp has been testing the native Mac client for some time now, with a public beta version released earlier this year. The beta version was available to users running systems with Apple Silicon and macOS 11 Big Sur or newer.
In addition, WhatsApp had also introduced a Windows client with similar group-calling capabilities back in March.
This is not the first time WhatsApp has released desktop apps. The company initially launched its desktop apps in 2016 but has since made significant updates to accommodate changing desktop machine architectures. Furthermore, in 2021, WhatsApp began experimenting with multidevice linking, allowing users to receive messages on any of their four connected devices, even if their phone isn’t connected to the internet.