New Whatsapp app allows group calls to up to 32 people from your desktop

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Meta Platforms, has launched a new WhatsApp app for Windows. It allows users to do group video calls with up to 8 people and audio calls with up to 32 people from their desktop computers. 

Meta said WhatsApp started as a mobile app, and its roots in the mobile ecosystem continued to remain strong, but with hundreds of millions of people using WhatsApp on computers and tablets, the company is focused on making the messaging and calling experience across devices even better. The new WhatsApp app for Windows desktop loads faster and improves the calling experience for around 2 billion active messaging app users.

The social media company aims to position WhatsApp as a platform with a fully end-to-end encrypted messaging experience that allows cross-platform communication between mobile phones, computers, tablets and more. It has recently introduced a new WhatsApp beta experience for Android tablets and for Mac desktops that are currently in the early stages.

“As we continue to increase the number of devices that support WhatsApp, we’ve recently introduced a new WhatsApp beta experience for Android tablets and for Mac desktops that are currently in the early stages of beta. We look forward to bringing WhatsApp to even more devices in the future,” Meta said.

Earlier, users could use WhatsApp on a desktop with WhatsApp web by scanning a QR code. Thus it required an active internet connection on the primary phone for uninterrupted service. The platform fixed this limitation by introducing a ‘linked devices’ feature to common users last year.

“Since introducing new multi-device capabilities, we have made improvements including faster device linking and better syncing across devices, as well as new features like link previews and stickers,” Meta said.