Why is Facebook/WhatsApp doing the tether to the phone crap? I have a few seniors in the family who have no need of a cellphone (stay at home most of the time). Everyone else in the family uses WhatsApp and these poor people are left out of the look. It is completely stupid as far as I can see. What is the phone requirement buying them?
1/ phone tethering is the price to pay for end-to-end encryption: the support of multiple devices is not compatible with perfect forward secrecy, as the former require the asynchronous push of messages to all devices while PFS requires synchronicity (at least some kind of, as explained in their white paper here: <a href="https://lobste.rs/s/sx2f0r/whatsapp_encryption_overview_technical_white_paper" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs/s/sx2f0r/whatsapp_encryption_overview_tech...</a><p>2/ if you don't like the Desktop App (or are using Linux), you can use <a href="https://web.whatsapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.whatsapp.com/</a> and/or the Chrome extension WhatsChrome <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatschrome/bgkodfmeijboinjdegggmkbkjfiagaan" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatschrome/bgkodf...</a>
I hate Websites selling themselves as "Desktop apps". I'd much rather have a native interface, me and my battery would say thank you for that.
It seems to be nothing more than <a href="https://web.whatsapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.whatsapp.com/</a> in a web view. So I can't really see interest.
Since when it became fashionable to use a wrapper of your web site? "Because the app runs natively on your desktop, you'll have support for native desktop notifications, better keyboard shortcuts, and more." I think Firefox is perfectly capable of doing any of those. I just hate it someone comes up and says 'Look we built a native app' I'm sorry but no you haven't! If I wanted to use your web page I can do that I don't need you to wrap it and ship it as a native app. Disappointed.
Windows 8 minimum? Is this an UWP app or what's the reasoning here?<p>Edit: I downloaded and successfully launched this on Windows 7. It seems like a standard Electron app. Now I wonder if the Windows 8 requirement is purely for tech support reasons, or if there's some specific feature that would fail on Windows 7.
Why is the app closing completely if I press 'x'? wouldn't be much better to stay in background mode like Slack does (well and many other chat clients)? It's annoying...<p>I'll keep using my custom wrapper with NW.js (apparently this uses electron) until this behaviour is implemented...
I was excited when I saw the headline but the phone teathering is a deal breaker.<p>I removed whatsapp from my phone precisely because it took up too much space, with all the photos and videos being shared daily. It's a shame really.. a desktop app would've been a great alternative
Well, at least it's not a Chrome Add-On. Still useless for me because of the tether to phone point.<p>Now please Signal. Give me something we can all work with.
When I saw this I was excited that maybe I could finally switch from Telegram. But no, it's tethered. I don't want to have to always make sure my phone is charged and with signal. I really don't get it. I get they can't do it the telegram way, by storing plaintext on the server. However I don't get why they can't do it like iMessage and encrypt the messages with each registered device's key. Perhaps moxie can explain why they can't do this.
An old friend of mine suggested I try out Viber or Whatsapp to contact her. I had a look at them, but they want full access to all the contacts on your phone, its all or nothing, you cant use either to communicate with select people. So I elected not to use them. Just gonna use email.
Is anyone qualified to comment on what this will do with my OS X address book and similar data should I open it?<p>edit: on the plus side, looks like it's just their web app repackaged using Electron. Still not sure what all these helpers are for though
Meh, no Linux support, so I'll still be using Viber even though my siblings in Germany and Switzerland always try to get me to install WhatsApp instead, appearantly it is super big there. Here in Sweden noone ever asked me to install it.
Even if it's "just a wrapper" the native notifications are worth it for me. I really wish iMessage would have a web view like WhatsApp that you can just open on another computer though. Even if it's not a Mac.
Still tethered to a phone... i'll just keep using this <a href="https://github.com/Aluxian/WhatsApp-Desktop" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Aluxian/WhatsApp-Desktop</a>
So what is the benefit of this over the Web version? Same UI, both need the internet, both have desktop notifications, both need your cellphone to be connected to the internet. Not to mention, no linux version
Nice. Maybe with this I can convince my friends to move over to WhatsApp from Google Hangouts. The lack of desktop app support for Hangouts has been driving me nuts.
the page is broken on Debian 8 / Iceweasel with ABE. Is it an outdated setup? Many times I feel people are fixing what is not broken to end up with something inferior.
Is this a rip off from ChitChat?<p><a href="https://github.com/stonesam92/ChitChat" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/stonesam92/ChitChat</a>