It’s weird. With 3 billion users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform in the world. It landed on the App Store back in 2009, about six months before the iPad was introduced. And in all that time, there has never been an iPad app for WhatsApp.
Until today. You can now download WhatsApp for iPad.
It has always been an odd omission. Meta (then Facebook) bought WhatsApp back in 2014. The resources to make a version of WhatsApp for the iPad have certainly been there. The design has been there, too: WhatsApp is available for iPhone, Android phones, Mac, Windows, and the web. It’s not as though this is a phone-only messaging platform.
We may never know exactly why it was decided that the iPad wasn’t worthy of its own WhatsApp app for the last 15 years. The iPhone app could not run on an iPad due to restrictions on “telephony” type apps. You could always use the web client on iPad, but that had some limitations—the native client lets you use the front or rear camera and hold video calls with up to 32 people, as well as share your screen. And it’s nicely formatted for the iPad’s large screen.
The app supports standard iPad features like Stage Manager, Slide Over, and Split View, as well as supporting Apple Pencil. So go grab it now. Find out how to install and use WhatsApp on iPad in our tutorial.
Author: Jason Cross, Senior Editor, Macworld
Jason has written about technology for more than 25 years - first in the gaming press, then focusing on enthusiast PCs and general technology. He enjoys learning how complicated technology works and explaining it in a way anyone can understand.