What’s new with WhatsApp on your wrist?
For years, WhatsApp on an Apple Watch has been a bit of a letdown —a basic notification center. You’d get an alert, maybe see the first line of a message, and that was about it. Anything more, and you had to pull out your iPhone.
Key features in the new app
- Reading full messages (even the long ones)
- Recording and sending voice messages
- Seeing who’s calling with call notifications
- Reacting with emojis
- Viewing clearer images and stickers
- Scrolling through more of your chat history
This all sounds great, but just keep in mind that you’ll need to be on the latest software. The new app requires an Apple Watch Series 4 or later, and you must be running watchOS 10 or newer.
Why is this significant
The new WhatsApp app for Apple Watch. | Image credit — Meta
Frankly, WhatsApp has been lagging way behind the competition here. Telegram, its biggest rival, has had a surprisingly capable native watch app for ages, letting users browse chats, send voice notes, and even view stickers. This new WhatsApp app feels less like innovation and more like Meta finally playing catch-up to a feature set its competitor has offered for a long time.
Still, its arrival makes the Apple Watch a far more complete device, especially for handling quick replies without your iPhone.
It’s about time
My first thought? Finally! Although I live in the U.S., where WhatsApp is not as big as iMessage, I do communicate a lot with family overseas and WhatsApp is the de facto app to do that. Not being able to send a quick voice message—my preferred way to reply—was kind of an inconvenience on the Apple Watch. This update single-handedly fixes that.
