By Srijita Chakraborty
After years of being “just for texting,” WhatsApp Web is finally learning how to talk.
The Facebook-owned messaging service has started to add native voice and video calling capabilities to the web version of the service, which will enable the service’s 60 million daily users to make calls from the browser without needing to download a dedicated app to enable the service. This is a big change from the conventional use of this web part of this service as an add-on to the mobile application.
It should be noted that with this update, the user will now be able to see the “voice/video call” button on chats through WhatsApp Web, which can be accessed through the browser. For the user to be able to make the call using this app, it is as simple as clicking a button located at the top of the window of the chat on WhatsApp, as it is the case for PCs that use various versions of the Windows and macOS desktop operating systems. The call feature of WhatsApp was already present on these two devices.
At this moment, the function of the call feature can only support one-to-one conversation. However, group conversation cannot be supported by WhatsApp because, at this moment, they are testing this feature as well.
The aspect of privacy also remains the same. The calls that are made on WhatsApp Web are end-to-end encrypted, which is the same encryption that is offered by the WhatsApp application on both platforms. The app also offers screen sharing when making video calls, making the WhatsApp Web application even more useful for the workplace.
Another significant advantage is flexibility, and the reason for this is that the feature is browser-based, which means it can be used on Linux, for instance, where there is no official WhatsApp Desktop app available.
It has, however, been gradually rolling out, particularly for beta users, although it will soon be officially released.