WhatsApp announces voice and video calling for its web version

WhatsApp has announced to roll out support for voice and video calling to its desktop app. This will give relief to countless people sitting in front of computers who have had to reach for their phone every time their WhatsApp rang.

 

WhatsApp said its nearly five-year-old desktop app for Mac and Windows will only support one-to-one calls, but that it will be expanding this feature to include group voice and video calls “in the future.” Video calls work “seamlessly” for both portrait and landscape orientation, and the desktop client is “set to be always on top so you never lose your video chats in a browser tab or stack of open windows,” the firm said.

 

Support for voice and video calls is not being extended to WhatsApp Web, the browser version of the service, at the moment. The new feature support should come in handy to millions of people who use WhatsApp’s desktop client everyday and have had to use Zoom or Google Meet for one-to-one video calls on desktop partly because of convenience.

 

Like the 100 billion messages that WhatsApp processes on its platform each day, voice and video calls are also end-to-end encrypted.

 

It rolled out ephemeral messages, photos and videos that disappear after seven days late last year, and also rolled out its payments service in India, its biggest market by users.

 

The new feature additions come as WhatsApp is attempting to convince users to agree to its planned changes to privacy policy - which has received some heat on Twitter. Whether those concerns raised by a handful of people on Twitter extend to the larger population remains to be seen.