When your phone is too bothersome to pull out or even carry while on a run, yourWear OSsmartwatch comes to the rescue. It can route music to your earbuds, keep track of where you’re headed, and, for the first time, let you keep in touch onWhatsApp! Here’s what you need to know about the Meta-owned messaging service’s first smartwatch app.
The company unceremoniously rolled said application out for Wear OS 3 watch owners in July 2023 to serve a small subset of its billions of monthly active users.
The Wear OS app has been in some form of beta testing for nearly a year, with a fuller product surfacing in May (viaXDA-Developers). Until now, users could only see message notifications and send quick replies. The app’s final version allows users to make and take voice calls and browse ongoing text chats.
How to install and use WhatsApp on Wear OS?
To be clear,you’ll need a watch running Wear OS 3 or laterto get WhatsApp up and running. Ensure the app is on your Android phone through thePlay Storeand your watch. Apps on your phone don’t have their Wear OS versions synced automatically to your watch.
Here’s a quick way of installing WhatsApp on your watch:
Opening the app will bring you to a list of your most recent conversations. You can select any of them to enter into the thread.
At the bottom of the screen, you can send a reply by tapping either on the microphone icon to leave a voice message or the keyboard icon to use Wear OS’s built-in input interface. This lets you use a virtual keyboard, insert emoji, perform voice-to-text with Google’s engine, or enter a quick reply from a list of available options.
Where’s WhatsApp on Apple Watch?
You could argue that Meta should’ve prioritized the more extensive overall Apple Watch user base (which is similar software-wise). There’s been absolutely no word on the beta front about an Apple Watch app coming. Even if signs were to show up, we wouldn’t be surprised to see such a feature stuck in development for an extended period. An app can’t come soon enough for users of Apple’s smartwatch, suffice to say.
In the meantime, this app gives Android and Wear OS a much-needed edge over Apple’s platforms for WhatsApp users. They may not have iMessage, but they have a more complete WhatsApp experience. Funnily enough, this comes as Adam Mosseri, the chief of sister Meta property Instagram, claimed Android to be the superior mobile operating system over iOS (viaAndroid Police).
