And no IPad version to
Isn’t the web version a full client that works without a phone nearby nowadays?
Yes it is, and because of who owns it, I would even prefer that to an unsandboxed closed source native binary.
Pretty much I’ll never understand why people want their webpages to be apps with access to all your shit
it is convenient mostly for developers, not people.
But a lot of these apps are electron webpages in application form I’ll never understand it
It’s because the vast, vast, VAST majority of people have no idea that many apps are just showing a website. Also, the app version is almost always more efficient in terms of precious phone screen real estate compared to a browser. Apps also remember who you are so you don’t have to login. It isn’t hard to understand why people like them.
That said, many apps are horrible from a privacy perspective. But that is largely hidden from the average user, most of whom simply don’t think much about online privacy anyway.
I hope the ubiquity of irritating ads are the thin edge of the wedge that gets more people interested in ad-blocking, and then perhaps online privacy more generally.
Yes, but no calls, because apparently a browser doesnt have microphone and speaker support
Whatsapp does their calls over voIP anyways right?
works without a phone nearby nowadays?
Last time I checked it kicked me out for no reason… But in a nutshell yes.
I wouldn’t install it on my system in any case.
Same. No sane linux user should.
…
Und: Hubi ist Linux Nutzer konfirmiert. - 2023, koloriert
👀
I don’t like WhatsApp, but some people simply refuse to use anything else (“better”) and the web clients can bridge the gap but it’s extremely annoying not being able to answer a call with a person you are texting
Easy, I don’t talk to such people. They can have my email or phone number if truly necessary. Yes, same for family or work, just not using Meta products for communication. Surprisingly enough people do understand.
Element one via bridges and run WhatsApp on an old phone - that’s the most I will allow an app from meta in my enviroment
But please tell your contacts that you’re using bridges, if you haven’t already.
You are effectively giving away encryption keys to a third party, since those messages need to be decrypted and re-encrypted mid-transit.
Everyone who is part of the chats you use bridges with deserves to know about that fact, at least.
WhatsApp is owned by Meta right?
Yes
Not sure why anyone would use it. I certainly wouldn’t.
Couple reasons:
WhatsApp was its own company, took advantage of an open market in EU where SMS (and “international” phone calls?) were extra rate charges on mobile phones. Once every one got accustomed to using whatsapp Meta took it over and now we’re stuck with it.
To communicate with anyone outside of the US, where it is extremely popular and is the main interaction with many businesses as well.
It’s almost impossible not to sadly, at least if you want to reach everybody in ypur contacts… It was the first popular messaging app here and inertia prevents people from moving to better alternatives now.
Meanwhile in the US and Canada: So, I’ll just send an SMS, k?
Also in the US: Blue SmS right?
Teenagers are the only ones who care about that
I think a lot of tech-savvy adults care about E2E on blue iMessage bubbles. I won’t talk about sensitive information via green, that’s all going to signal.
Imma burst your bubble (pun intended) but that’s such a small part of the population and even such a small part of the tech savvy population that I don’t think it’s much of an argument.
That’s fair! I’m just going by my own experiences. But I have a lot of tech-savvy friends and acquaintances and even many non-tech-savvy mates are into Signal vs SMS because it’s secure, has great audio/video chat, and it’s not owned by shudders Facebook. I personally do not touch any google or Facebook products or services.
My MF smartwatch has WhatsApp but still no Linux version.
Flatpak has WhatsApp for Linux.
It’s just WhatsApp web as an app
That’s exactly what a “desktop” client would be anyway: a crappy, memory hogging electron app.
But WhatsApp have a really good app on windows which can attend calls and stuff . I think recently in Mac too . I’m using WhatsApp inside waydroid container in Linux so that I can at least attend calls
But it spoofs the user agent as a Mac because WhatsApp blocks Linux on the web
What? My WhatsApp works normally on my Firefox on Arch.
Nice to know they changed it then
Technically you could run an Android container on Linux like with Waydroid and get WhatsApp too, it’s just that there’ll probably be more Android users
Stop using that shit
It’s a web app, you don’t really need a native application for it.
I just use discord via the browser. Why would I allow it to harvest my data as an app?
Push to talk… And I think that’s literally it 😂
i bet you could find some little tool to replace that easily. sucks though
Because the desktop app works without having your phone around, if I remember correctly. It’s a relatively recent feature.
You shouldn’t use this app in the first place. It had many days breaches and it copy everything from Telegram (maybe everyone copies, but I don’t use other apps). I only mainly use Telegram and Matrix.
It’s impossible to convince that to friends and family. In my country everyone use WhatsApp as primary messaging app . It’s kind of like iMessage situation in US
I feel that, a good chunk of my friends are on Signal thankfully but all of my family still use WhatsApp
iMessage For My Blue Friends, Signal For My Green Friends
Even if it exists, then it does not have to be good. Look at Microsoft Teams.
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It has indeed improved a lot over the last 2 years or so and is now actually quite a mature product, as much as I hate to admit that about an MS product. My biggest gripes with it are its refusal to acknowledge you may be using multiple devices (to this day) and MS’s insistence that a person only do one thing at one time (can’t edit calendar items while checking a chat, for example). Their Linux app is a joke and I’m better off running it from Chrome. The phone app makes the WiFi interface crash constantly and I have to run it off 4G; it is the only app I have this issue with.
Which brings me to another gripe. Teams documentation insists that screen sharing on Linux is not supported, and sure enough you cannot see the option for it while on a call with someone. However if you are in a meeting (with however many people), the option magically appears and works absolutely perfectly.
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Apologies for the late reply, still getting a hang of this!
By multiple devices issues I meant the following. Sometimes for example, I am on a Teams call on my phone but want to use my laptop to view screensharing stuff and join the call there too (without hanging up the phone). Teams will insist that my audio switch over to the laptop too and I have to manually disable the audio on the laptop and re-enable it on the phone. It shocks me that such a mature offering from a massive corporation still cannot figure out that I may want a screenshare/audio split onto two devices and ask me at least. Another smaller nag, if I want audio only on the phone, it will constantly bug me to tell me the incoming video is switched off. I kind of understand this however, I get that they want to let the average user know why there is no incoming video, but surely there ought to be a “leave me alone” setting for this.
web.whatsapp.com works really well
edit: It does not do voice or video but I’m OK switching to my phone for those
There are plenty of desktop wrappers available for the Web version. I don’t use WhatsApp often but from my experience it seems fairly similar to the Windows desktop app
Main problem is that it doesn’t have voice and video calls there.
Ah fair enough, I can see how that’d be an issue
Afaik they created a Windows client that’s native sort of recently and I’m pretty sure it’s a better experience than the web version because that’s one slow as hell to initially load for me.
Its proprietary so that’s not a shock
So is Discord and Viber
Neither of which run well on Linux. Don’t use proprietary software when there are other options
I’ve been running Discord just fine on Linux. It’s just a web wrapper, after all. What issues have you been having with it?
Screen share on Wayland is completely broken
Armcord has a plugin fix for that I believe!
Armcord doesn’t have global keybinds yet though (no push to talk/mute toggle unless you are tabbed into armcord) which is even worse imo
Last time I tried Viber, it ran fine on Linux, what issues have you had with it?
Discord also works pretty well, minus the white flashing when scrolling through GIFs for me
Viber and Discord aren’t free (libre) software and should be avoided. I’ve never ran them because of that reason. However, I’ve heard lots of complaints of proprietary mainstream applications not being great on Linux.
“Neither of which run well on Linux.”
“I’ve never ran them because of that reason.”
Yikes.
Wrappers are available as snaps/flatpaks
Use it in matrix? Or Element One?
“best i can do is a chromium only web app”
