WhatsApp is dropping its native Windows app in favor of a web-based version

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Editor's take: Meta is preparing to deliver a worse WhatsApp experience on Windows 11 by discontinuing investment in its native desktop app. While there's no official confirmation of this move yet, the latest WhatsApp beta makes the situation clear.

The latest WhatsApp Beta introduces an unexpected change for Windows users. The update reportedly discontinues the native UWP app, replacing it with an empty shell built around the Chromium-based Edge browser framework found in recent Windows versions.

WhatsApp launched a native Windows version in 2016, later converting it to use the Universal Windows Platform API with the WinUI framework. This native approach gave the app a performance edge over the web-based version. Now, Meta is returning to WebView2, the Edge framework that wraps apps around the Windows native browser component.

The latest WhatsApp beta essentially behaves like the web.whatsapp.com service, which users access by pairing the mobile app with a desktop browser. By wrapping a bit of web code around the WebView2 component, WhatsApp will consume more RAM and deliver reduced performance compared to previous versions.

Recent tests by Windows Latest show the new beta is consuming around 30 percent more RAM than the existing native (UWP/WebUI) stable version. Like the user-facing Edge browser, Chrome, and other Chromium-based browsers, WebView2 is a native Windows component built on the Chromium layout engine. Many simple Windows apps built around HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other non-native web technologies rely on this component.

Meta's decision to turn back the clock with an inferior messaging experience for billions of PC users may come down to money. Windows Latest speculates that a tech giant pulling in $164.5 billion a year doesn't want to spend a fraction of its vast wealth maintaining two separate codebases for the same app.

Forcing users into a single UI benefits the company, while end users endure a worse experience on PC. Even Meta's documentation says a native WhatsApp app offers better performance, higher reliability, and additional teamworking features – so either the developers neglected to update the docs or they simply don't care how users feel about the UI.

Another possible explanation for this potential WhatsApp fiasco is that Meta's developers are being lazy on some desktop systems, while focusing more on the phone apps, which is exactly what they did with Facebook Messenger. The company has also drug its feet on other platforms. The company released a native iPad version just last month – a mere 15 years after Apple launched its tablet line. This patchy approach leaves PC users stuck with a downgraded experience, raising questions about Meta's commitment to its desktop audience.

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WhatsApp is dropping its native Windows app in favor of a web-based version

 

[NumberNine]

Microsoft has begun doing this to their own applications. Spotify struggles to maintain anything functional under UWP as well. Facebook is just reading the writing on the wall.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

UWP is just a colossal failure.

 

[goldman]

Well, the UWP was buggy as hell, so focusing all development to the web version seems like a good idea. Hopefully they just make the chat resizable in the web version before they change it. (or maybe I just check out pidgin?)
as another comment said, even MS has problems with their native stuff, maybe they should stop spending resources in inventing a new kind of comboluted native framework for the n'th and start working on the actual OS

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

UWP is just a colossal failure.

Even WPF was a mess compared to windowsforms...

 

[Jack77]

Sometimes I think that out of the thousands of people working for these companies only 100 are actual developers.

 

[GeoffreyA]

We need a return to old-school Win32 programming.

 

[opckieran]

Completely unsurprising. When an app has to be coded for multiple different environments, that takes more time and costs more money. Dropping development of one or more Windows, Mac, and/or Linux versions of an application in favor of a single web-application allows companies to utilize their dev teams more efficiently, in the form of potentially saving money by cutting devs, cutting down development time, speeding up bug fixing, etc.

We need a return to old-school Win32 programming.

Wouldn’t surprise me if Win32 went the way of Flash in the next 10-15 years. Web browsers are only getting more and more capable as well as already being universal while Windows Runtimes are getting more clunky and fragmented. Combine this with M$ pushing cloud/hosted Windows, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Desktop Office dropped entirely in favor or O365, even in the enterprise sector.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

We need a return to old-school Win32 programming.

Win32 is decades old and has a lot of limitations resulting from that. I do believe we need a new API for future software, but so far MS hasn't actually made a competent replacement.

Completely unsurprising. When an app has to be coded for multiple different environments, that takes more time and costs more money. Dropping development of one or more Windows, Mac, and/or Linux versions of an application in favor of a single web-application allows companies to utilize their dev teams more efficiently, in the form of potentially saving money by cutting devs, cutting down development time, speeding up bug fixing, etc.





Wouldn’t surprise me if Win32 went the way of Flash in the next 10-15 years. Web browsers are only getting more and more capable as well as already being universal while Windows Runtimes are getting more clunky and fragmented. Combine this with M$ pushing cloud/hosted Windows, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Desktop Office dropped entirely in favor or O365, even in the enterprise sector.

Will never happen, for one simple reason: The entire point of using Windows is legacy support. If MS were to strip out win32 support, there would be no reason to run windows over Macs or linux/chromeOS boxes. The adoption of web platforms has already done a serious number to Windows' marketshare.

The other thing they had in their back pocket was Active Directory, but years of decay and MS pushing for their terrible Intune service have resulted in things like Jamf making huge forward strides. If you want to move cloud, there's little reason to stay with MS's system.

2016 was supposed to be the last office. Then 2019. Then 2021. Now we're on office 2024, because enterprises do not want to overpay for a subscription to a cloud word processor. Google docs is free, and the enterprise options are far cheaper than MS and work much better. Same with google meet VS teams, google drive VS one drive, ece.

 

[opckieran]

Will never happen, for one simple reason: The entire point of using Windows is legacy support. If MS were to strip out win32 support, there would be no reason to run windows over Macs or linux/chromeOS boxes. The adoption of web platforms has already done a serious number to Windows' marketshare.

The other thing they had in their back pocket was Active Directory, but years of decay and MS pushing for their terrible Intune service have resulted in things like Jamf making huge forward strides. If you want to move cloud, there's little reason to stay with MS's system.

2016 was supposed to be the last office. Then 2019. Then 2021. Now we're on office 2024, because enterprises do not want to overpay for a subscription to a cloud word processor. Google docs is free, and the enterprise options are far cheaper than MS and work much better. Same with google meet VS teams, google drive VS one drive, ece.

Oh I don’t think M$ would completely deprecate Win32 either (even though Windows S was created to do just that).

I’m just arguing that there’s already little reason to stay with M$ outside of those extremely finicky programs that require native Win32, but, emulation/wrapping is getting so good that 99% of those 1% edge cases won’t apply anymore in a decade.

Web apps seem to be where the industry is headed period. Less variables to develop for, easier to troubleshoot, easier to manage licensing for, etc.