Social Media giant WhatsApp have finally added the ability to make voice and video calls via its under-served desktop app for Windows and macOS for now.
It must be noted that the new functionality was announced on the WhatsApp blog recently after giving users a taste of the experience they’ve enjoyed on the mobile app for long.
Although it must be noted that for now WhatsApp desktop users will only be able to make one-on-one voice and video calls from the the desktop app and the calls will be end-to-end encrypted, a point the company has been keen to drive home recently, amid concerns over its privacy policy concerning been protected.
According to the WhatsApp owners saying the video call functionality will be especially useful to a resizable window that will remain atop your browser windows.
Quoting the blog post as stated by the company saying “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.”
Although it was also noted that the inability to engage in video or voice calls with more than one other participant will mean folks will need to revert to their mobile device or use a desktop friendly platform like Zoom or Google Meet for conference calls for now.
With the above condition which means that WhatsApp still have it plans on expanding in the future, once it has been able to solve the one-on-one calls problem.
Quoting Whatsapp in their own word saying “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,” and these feature is available now on Mac and Windows PC only.
