The continued rise and adoption of various online messaging platforms has given smartphone users a ton of different choices when it comes to on-the-go messaging and video calls. One of the longest-active and most popular right now – WhatsApp – has added a ton of different features over the years, which do come in pretty handy.
With that said, one feature that the Meta-owned platform has always lacked is the ability to be used across different devices, requiring users to keep WhatsApp registered to a single smartphone, unlike competing apps like Telegram and even Facebook Messenger (the latter of which is also owned by Meta). This meant that users needed to backup and assign their WhatsApp app to one device.
That’s all about to change, though – WhatsApp has recently announced via its official website that it will be bringing over support for more than one device, so users will be able to access their WhatsApp messages and contacts conveniently throughout several other devices. At the moment however, this feature will be limited to five devices, including the “main” device. There are some caveats, as per WhatsApp’s announcement:
“A feature highly requested by users, now you can link your phone as one of up to four additional devices, the same as when you link with WhatsApp on web browsers, tablets and desktops. Each linked phone connects to WhatsApp independently, ensuring that your personal messages, media, and calls are end-to-end encrypted, and if your primary device is inactive for a long period, we automatically log you out of all companion devices.”
“Linking phones as companion devices makes messaging easier. Now you can switch between phones without signing out and pick up your chats where you left off. Or if you’re a small business owner, additional employees are now able to respond to customers directly from their phones under the same WhatsApp Business account.”
Recently, the messaging platform also introduced additional changes to its service by way of the “Keep in Chat” feature. Keep in Chat works by notifying senders when someone in a chat keeps their message, and will be given an option to veto the decision – messages affected by thus will be deleted after a set period of time. Messages that a user has saved on WhatsApp will be noted with a bookmark icon and will be saved in the “Kept Messages” folder.
