WhatsApp for iPad might still be in the works

We’ve been hearing rumours about WhatsApp for iPad for years now but not much has been officially shared about it. Recent reports, however, suggest that it is still in the works and it is possible that we might see the messaging app land up on iPads.

WhatsApp head Will Cathcart told The Verge in an interview that since people have wanted an iPad app for a long time now, they’d “love to to it”. While this does not necessarily mean that the company is working on an app for iPad for certain, it does mean that the plan is not off the cards. Cathcart’s confirmation that his team is keen on making WhatsApp for iPad is encouraging news for now.

Cathcart mentioned in the interview that WhatsApp engineers have been updating the app so that it can work independently on multiple devices and users will no longer need to keep their phones on and connected to the Internet for messages to load, as currently is the case for the WhatsApp web portal.

"We did a lot of work on the technology for supporting multiple devices. That would be really important for a tablet app, to be able to use the app even if your phone isn't on. So the underlying technology is there,” said Cathcart.

This is not the first time Cathcart has mentioned WhatsApp for iPad, he had mentioned it in June last year as well. With the app being so massively popular, and because irrespective of what phone you use, the UX is pretty much the same, users are counting on getting the app as an actual product on the iPad rather than a makeshift version.

However, cross-platform support is not the easiest tech to crack. WhatsApp is still working on the ability to migrate chats from Android devices to iPhones and vice versa and clearly, every time something like this needs to be added, a lot of work has to be done in the background for a flawless experience. 

The case is going to be the same when it comes to getting the messaging app for work on multiple devices without an active phone connection. WhatsApp’s main appeal is its encryption and this particularly needs to be handled on every device. So, getting WhatsApp as a native app on iPad involves a lot more work than just making it fit the screen.

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