WhatsApp for Desktop has been available for a few years now on macOS. Although it offers most of the features iPhone users have, the company decided to work on an Apple silicon version to improve responsiveness, battery drain, and efficiency.
With that in mind, WhatsApp released a very limited early-beta program of the app for Apple silicon Macs in 2022 that is now being made available to everyone that wants to try this Catalyst project app before the stable version is out.
This app still lacks some of the WhatsApp features users want to see, such as the Stories-like function Status. In addition, pre-saved stickers aren’t available within the app.
Here’s how WABetaInfo describes this app:
The new native app built by using Mac Catalyst offers a more seamless experience for WhatsApp users on macOS: the app has been optimized to take full advantage of Mac’s hardware, making for a faster and more efficient user experience. In addition, the app has been designed to look and feel more like a traditional Mac app by introducing an app sidebar, and the ability to drag and drop files.
In the future, WhatsApp will use this Apple silicon-supported app to introduce a version of this application for iPad. This is part of the company’s plan to introduce multi-support device 2.0. Currently, users can only register one smartphone number and use it on the desktop or the web without having the cell phone closer.
With WhatsApp expanding the availability of this version apart from TestFlight testers, any user with a Mac that supports Catalyst apps (mostly apps with the M1 and M2 chips family) can try it now. It’s possible to download the dmg file from the official website here.
