WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world and it’s been rumoured that two new versions are on the way.
These would be standalone apps developed specifically for Apple’s iPad and Mac computers.
At the moment, users on both platforms have to have their iPhone wirelessly connected so that messages – both incoming and outgoing – can be relayed through the iPhone.
But the team behind WABetainfo, which monitors WhatsApp developments, says the chat app is aiming to become ubiquitous. That means dedicated apps for both systems that would turn WhatsApp into a multi-platform tool in the same way as Apple’s Messages service. According to this tip, it would also be possible to use WhatsApp on multiple devices simultaneously.
Part of the reason this may have taken a while is that WhatsApp is known for its end-to-end encryption, which can be tricky on multiple devices. The Facebook-owned WhatsApp may take the same approach as Apple and use a cluster of public keys for each device you access it on.
And you may welcome anything that increases your ability to use WhatsApp, as it was recently cited as having an improvement on mental health.
Dr Linda Kaye, a senior lecturer in psychology at Edgehill University said that WhatsApp ‘has a positive impact on psychological wellbeing’.
Her research found that people who spent more time on the messaging service felt less lonely and experienced a boost to their self-esteem as a result of ‘feeling closer to friends and family’.
Dr Kaye said: ‘There’s lots of debate about whether spending time on social media is bad for our well-being but we’ve found it might not be as bad as we think.
‘The more time people spent on WhatsApp, the more this related to them feeling close to their friends and family and they perceived these relationships to be good quality.’
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