WhatsApp Finally Gets a Native iPad App
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It’s been nearly 16 years since WhatsApp first came to the iPhone. It launched on the App Store in August 2009, two years before Apple introduced iMessage. Apple unveiled its first iPad in early 2010, but to say that WhatsApp has been slow to embrace Apple’s tablet would be an understatement.
In fact, for a long time, it looked like WhatsApp would never get a native iPad app. The company seemingly had no interest in embracing tablets, and that didn’t change even after it was acquired by Meta (then Facebook) in early 2014. Of course, Facebook’s iPad app has never been great, but at least it had one.
While that made some sense in an era when it was focused on SMS-like mobile messaging — WhatsApp was the first mainstream app to tie Internet-based instant messaging to a user’s phone number — the company’s intransigence became more perplexing when it released Mac and Windows apps a few years ago.
While WhatsApp users could run the iPhone app on their iPad, that was less than ideal, and users kept clamoring for the company to release a native iPad experience.
The good news is that WhatsApp has heard everyone’s cries. WhatsApp for iPad has officially arrived, and after a 15-year wait, we can safely say that this is a very well-deserved “finally.”
To be fair, we sort of knew it was coming when WhatsApp for iPad went into TestFlight beta in late 2023. At least, that got people’s hopes up. Sadly, after well over a year in beta, many went back to wondering if WhatsApp was just messing with our heads. The good news is that while the beta cycle took much longer than anyone expected, it wasn’t a bluff. The company enthusiastically announced the new version of WhatsApp today with a post on Threads.
As you might expect, WhatsApp for iPad isn’t a separate download but a universal app that bakes native iPad support into the iPhone and Mac download. You can grab it on the App Store for free, but folks who have been running the iPhone version on their iPad should eventually get it as an automatic update — and many may be in for a pleasant surprise when it suddenly morphs from the ugly adapted iPhone version into a proper iPad app.
As with WhatsApp for Mac and Windows, you’ll need to link the iPad app up with WhatsApp on your iPhone, as it still relies on SMS activation through the iPhone app. This also means it’s not a standalone app — you must set up WhatsApp on your iPhone to use it, so it works as a companion to that — and it will count as one of the four devices you can link to your WhatsApp account.
The good news is that WhatsApp has done a good job of embracing the iPad. The company didn’t just scale up and recompile WhatsApp to run on the iPad; it also takes advantage of the larger canvas to provide a side-by-side two-column layout and supports iPad multitasking features like Split View, Slide Over, and even Picture-in-Picture.
WhatsApp is only the third iPad app from the Meta family. While Facebook and (Facebook) Messenger have long been available for the iPad, Threads and Instagram remain iPhone-only. However, the company is rumored to have an iPad version of Instagram in the works.
