Meta recently announced that it has officially launched a native Apple Watch app for its WhatsApp service, which will significantly upgrade the user experience of WhatsApp on Apple Watch and make up for the previous limitation of only being able to make limited replies through iPhone mirror notifications.
Several key features have been introduced, including the ability to read voice messages and full messages.
According to WhatsApp's explanation, the native Apple Watch app has been updated with several key features, allowing users to handle instant messaging without taking out their iPhones:
• View full message:Previously, excessively long messages would be truncated when using mirrored notifications, but the new version of the app allows users to view the full message content.
• Recording and sending voice messages:One of the biggest upgrades is that users can now record and send voice messages directly on their Apple Watch.
• Quick emoji responses:You can quickly select emoji symbols to respond to messages.
• Enhanced call notifications:You can see the caller's detailed information directly on your watch before deciding whether to answer.
• Supports images and textures:You can browse "clear pictures and stickers" on your watch.
• View more chat history:There will be more historical messages to review than ever before.
In addition, WhatsApp emphasizes that even on Apple Watch, all messages and calls are protected by end-to-end encryption.
Requires watchOS 10 and Apple Watch Series 4 or later.
This update is significant for Apple Watch users, whose WhatsApp experience on Apple Watch was previously extremely limited, relying solely on mirrored notifications pushed from their iPhones to reply to messages, without being able to initiate conversations or view the full content.
To use this new native app, users need an Apple Watch Series 4 or later and to have their operating system upgraded to watchOS 10 or later.
A belated update
However, it is widely believed that Meta launched this native app "a bit late." For example, BlackBerry, which has long since disappeared from the market, launched its BBM app for Apple Watch back in 2015.
This situation is similar to that of another Meta service, Instagram, which also took many years to finally launch a native iPad app, showing that Meta's approach to native support for Apple's non-iPhone platforms seems to be relatively cautious.
