WhatsApp Finally Launches Desktop Apps For Windows And Mac

May 11, 2016 Though it’s the biggest messaging application in the world with more than 1 billion active users, WhatsApp has for years lived primarily on mobile phones. That could change significantly from Wednesday, when WhatsApp launched its first desktop apps for Windows 8 and Mac OS 10.9 and up. The apps sync with a WhatsApp user’s account on their mobile device, once they’ve downloaded them and scanned a QR code from inside Settings > WhatsApp Web on the mobile app. WhatsApp has made itself available on desktop before, through a web client called WhatsApp Web. The company launched that service in January 2015, initially for Android and Windows Phone users, before adding support for iOS users as well. But its new desktop apps offer more native support, the ability to use keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to have messages open in a separate window as opposed to being in a browser or lost in a sea of tabs. There have been several desktop apps in the past that have acted as wrappers for the browser plugins, such as ChitChat for Mac OS X, but this is the first time that Facebook-owned WhatsApp is providing its own native desktop solution.   Forbes