Taking years of being in the industry of the most popular messaging service on the Apple Watch, using the device has been, mildly speaking, frustrating. It had to make do with scanty notifications, in most cases, without the essential context and frantically searching their iPhone to reply. That era is officially over.
Meta has then at last started testing a native, dedicated WhatsApp app to the Apple Watch, which has been a giant step towards platform accessibility and user experience among millions of users worldwide. This is not merely an update, but a total modernization as far as it changes the Watch into a passive alert display into an active communication hub.
This is all that we have known about the new WhatsApp companion app that is presently being released to select users via the TestFlight program.
Between Watching and Doing: What the Native App Opens
The new app goes much further than the restriction imposed on the old notification system and is almost fully functionally equivalent to the mobile version. It is meant to be a minimal interface wherein convenient, fast, on-the-go interactions can be made.
Wrist core Functionalities
The new native app will provide a complete set of tools on your wrist, which lets you literally control your conversations and you do not need to draw out your phone all the time anymore:
- See All Conversation History: You may now scroll your chat list and see recent conversation right on the watch face, something very welcome given the lack of context before. Pinned and disappearing chats are correctly displayed and the interface is immediately familiar.
- Read Media: Users can now see the media attached to it, including images, on the screen of the watch itself.
- Write new messages: You will no longer be restricted to responding to incoming notifications. At any point, users can write and send new messages totally.
- Voice-First Input: The app takes into account the fact that the screens are small and focus more on hands-free communications. You can use a full text input through voice dictation and can also send voice notes using the wrist.
- Emoji Reactions: With a simple long-press on any message, it is possible to react instantly with an emoji, which is a fast and efficient means to recognize communication.
A Seamless Setup
The ease of setup is one of the most appropriate design decisions to make in this new companion app. It is said to automatically connect with the iPhone when it is opened, and it does not require any complicated, or manual processes and the time-consuming scanning of QR codes. The watch has a small indicator that gives current feedback on the connection status (e.g. connected, syncing, or disconnected).
The Noteworthy Snag: It is a companion App
Although this is a monumental functional upgrade, one important fact is observed that lays down some expectations on this first iteration, and it is that the WhatsApp Watch app is exclusively a companion app.
This implies that the Apple Watch cannot operate without being linked to an iPhone with the core WhatsApp iOS application. It is not an app that can access the cellular or Wi-Fi connection on the Apple Watch and access the phone feature to retrieve or send messages without any attack on any other application.
To the users who hoped to leave their iPhone at home and go running or go to the gym without losing any part of their communication use on their cellular Apple Watch, this does not happen yet. The architecture choice puts the importance of stability and integrity of the end-to-end encryption system used by WhatsApp by using the phone as the safe source of truth.
Technical Specifications of Testers
The availability of the new native application is now extremely limited to users of TestFlight beta. The devices to participate in it should comply with rigorous software requirements:
- The target iPhone should also be operating a special WhatsApp iPhone beta (25.32.10.71).
- Apple Watch itself will need watchOS 10.0 or more.
Strategic Significance: iMessage challenge
The rollout of this homegrown application is one of the key competitive actions of Meta. Apple has been supporting its native Messages application (iMessage) with a significantly high level of experience, both seamlessly and at the wrist, for years. Such a functional gap frequently drove the user to default to iMessage when dealing with other owners of Apple.
WhatsApp is specifically threatening the hegemony of iMessage in the wearable market and indirectly competing with it in the market, and it is setting standards of expected performance on smartwatches the world over by being able to match iMessage nearly feature-to-feature.
Interestingly, such a feature is also paralleled in the Wear OS ecosystem. WhatsApp already has a native messaging application available in Android smartwatches, and the new Apple Watch application is based on this, so the experience of using it appears the same and at the same high quality on both hardware platforms.
This release comes after the highly anticipated launch of the iPad application, which proves that Meta is strategically planning to make WhatsApp a first-party citizen on all major hardware platforms that would neutralize the device-related friction of its colossal user base.
What's Next?
Though it is an important win on the beta, the people will need to wait a bit longer. There is no official timeline of the public release of the app that has been announced by Meta. Considering the timeline of the significant WhatsApp additions, and the struggle to get here with half a companion app, users must set expectations of an entirely independent app, and complex technical directions would be necessary in order to operate security and encryption keys without relying on the iPhone.
In the meantime, it is concerned with the TestFlight environment and its stability and bugs removal. Now a native companion application, this will allow millions of the Apple Watch users who are dependent on WhatsApp to improve their daily lives in seconds, have it easier than ever to talk without being strapped to their phone.