WhatsApp is available as a companion app for smartwatches. The messenger is now available as an app for WearOS and is therefore migrating to smartwatches with the Google operating system. Users can then start new conversations, reply to messages and take calls right from their watch. A first picture shows that there is an overview with the last chats, but that the popular voice messages can also be included.
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You can now receive messages via WhatsApp on the smartwatch without a smartphone and, of course, read them on the display and react to them. Incoming and outgoing calls are also possible with the app. WhatsApp says in a press release: “Users can reply to their loved ones from anywhere – with their voice, reactions, quick replies or a text.”
Short announcement from Zuckerberg in the broadcast channel
Mark Zuckerberg also announces the app via his broadcast channel, which can be accessed on Instagram. Most recently, the Meta boss presented all the innovations there himself, from Voicebox, Meta’s language model, which can process hundreds of languages, to the Meta Quest+ subscription and the latest update from WhatsApp, with which you can open your own chats from a device using a QR code another device can transmit without the messages ending up on any servers in between.
Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta has yet revealed in a blog post how to log into the app with your WhatsApp account or whether you simply link the devices using a code. At least that’s how it worked with the already available beta version. It is also unclear when the new app for Apple’s smartwatches will be available.
WhatsApp has just changed its usage guidelines in the EU. At the beginning of the year, the Irish data protection authority complained that consent to the processing of personal data was missing. Meta had had these nodded to “service improvements and security functions” as a condition for use. Now it is said that they are processed out of a “legitimate interest”.
(emw)