WhatsApp working on UWP app for Windows 10

[Jamie McKane]

WhatsApp working on UWP app for Windows 10

WhatsApp is working on a new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app for Windows 10, according to a tweet published by WABetaInfo.

WABetaInfo, which tracks WhatsApp's beta updates to find upcoming features, confirmed that the UWP version of the app would be available by the end of 2019.

 

[Fulcrum29]

That will be nice, but more to be used with WhatsApp Business. I have no problem using the desktop app at the moment, but it still requires the phone to be connected to the internet at all times. A UWP app should solve that usability.

 

[Arthur]

...still requires the phone to be connected to the internet at all times. A UWP app should solve that usability.

How? Surely having the phone connected is part of WA's basic design? No way round that.

 

[ArmatageShanks]

Hmm good, somehow Whatapp web still only works in a incognito window in Chrome for some reason.

 

[Fulcrum29]

How? Surely having the phone connected is part of WA's basic design? No way round that.

UWP exist to address a scaling issue, yes. Fragmentation is an issue by large across many devices, but I’m hoping that by going UWP that it may become more universal with the WA ecosystem, hoping to see devices registration added to a ‘telephone’ number. In essence, it should be a universal experience across platforms.

 

[backstreetboy]

Pointless. UWP apps are dead.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Pointless. UWP apps are dead.

Yeah.. Forgive us for not taking your word for it... UWP isn't going anywhere anytime soon....

 

[backstreetboy]

Yeah.. Forgive us for not taking your word for it... UWP isn't going anywhere anytime soon....

you’ve told us that you would like us to continue to decouple many parts of the Universal Windows Platform so that you can adopt them incrementally such as WinUI, MSIX, and Windows Terminal.

https://blogs.windows.com/buildinga...ences-with-microsoft-365/#cDAhfjRhmxk8fG1r.97

Then why are they bringing more of it's features to legacy apps?

 

[ToxicBunny]

https://blogs.windows.com/buildinga...ences-with-microsoft-365/#cDAhfjRhmxk8fG1r.97

Then why are they bringing more of it's features to legacy apps?

Or because it's such a fundamental shift that it eases long term adoption over win32...

 

[Arthur]

https://blogs.windows.com/buildinga...ences-with-microsoft-365/#cDAhfjRhmxk8fG1r.97

Then why are they bringing more of it's features to legacy apps?

As @ToxicBunny says, it's part of the main intention (for past twenty years) to deprecate Win32, which isn't easy because of massive legacy installed base. Part of that move is making it possible to fold Win32 in a UWP wrapper so it's downloadable from the Store. UWP apps, even wrapped Win32 ones, run in a much more secure space, are installed and uninstalled without touching the DNA, and that's a big plus. Slack, for example, have done that with their Win client. As have quite a few others, but not nearly as many has Msft had hoped.

PWAs don't contradict this; they're part of the mix and, for Microsoft, an important part of trying to budge the world away from Win32, for all the obvious reasons we've all been talking about at great length for twenty years.

Behind this, the dev platforms are rapidly evolving. .Net 5 and the new framework out in the next 12 months should unify all the fragmented .Nets and pull things together very neatly, which will help the shift.