WhatsApp Would Love To Roll Out An iPad App, Says The Company’s Chief

A dedicated WhatsApp for the iPad has been in discussion for quite a while now, with WhatsApp’s head, Will Cathcart, telling The Verge in an interview that the company would “love to do it.”

WhatsApp has been testing out its multi-device 2.0 support in a beta version of the app for sometime now with the iPad being supported, but its still not a native app. However, Cathcart believes that the underlying tech to pave way for an iPad app is there.

We did a lot of work on the technology for supporting multiple devices,” Cathcart said, referencing the rollout of opt-in, multi-device support for WhatsApp last year. “Our web and our desktop apps now have that. If I have multi-device on, I can turn my phone off or lose my network connection and still get messages on my desktop. That would be really important for a tablet app, to be able to use the app even if your phone isn’t on. So the underlying technology is there.”

WhatsApp has also been reportedly trying to roll out a catalyst version of WhatsApp for the iPad to the Mac with screenshots being leaked adding weight to these reports and rumors that something is indeed being worked on behind the scenes.

The Verge further explains how WhatsApp’s multi-device support works and how this existing technology could very help with the release of an iPad app.

Because of the way WhatsApp encrypts messages, it historically hasn’t been able to sync chats across devices over the internet like most other messaging apps work. So if WhatsApp on your phone didn’t have access to the internet, the desktop client didn’t work. The beta version of multi-device support lets you sync your WhatsApp account on up to four devices at a time, a process that involves mapping device identifiers to an account key on WhatsApp’s servers in a way that’s still encrypted.

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