After much of a wait, WhatsApp has finally brought the voice and video calling support for its Windows and Mac desktop app, after rolling out the feature to select users starting in December last year. The Facebook-owned instant messaging giant confirmed the feature in a press release, “that private and secure one-to-one voice and video calls are now available on WhatsApp’s desktop app.”
The feature arrives five years after the WhatsApp desktop clients came into existence. But for now, the desktop app for Windows and Mac will only support one-to-one calls, while the support for group voice and video calls is on the cards for the future. According to folks over at TechCrunch, the support for voice and video calls won’t be extending to the Whatsapp Web, at least for now.
To ensure ease of use, the video calls will appear in a different window, oriented either in portrait or landscape orientation. The call window will always remain at the top of your desktop, so you don’t end up losing it among your other windows.
Security Concerns Over WhatsApp’s Desktop Voice and Video Calling Feature
The Facebook-owned messaging service has insisted that their user’s privacy and security are their primary concern, and all the voice and video calls will be end-to-end encrypted, whether calling from a desktop or a smartphone.
In its blog post, WhatsApp said that the messaging service witnessed a huge rise in calls on the platform often used for long conversations. According to Whatsapp, it broke the record for the most calls ever made in a single day with over 1.4 billion voice and video calls happening on New Year’s eve.
Throughout the last year, we’ve seen significant increases in people calling one another on WhatsApp, often for long conversations. Last New Year’s Eve, we broke the record for the most calls ever made in a single day with 1.4 billion voice and video calls. With so many people still apart from their loved ones, and adjusting to new ways of working, we want conversations on WhatsApp to feel as close to in-person as possible, regardless of where you are in the world or the tech you’re using
WhatsApp said in its official statement
In January, the Facebook-owned messaging service faced a huge backlash for rigorous changes in its privacy policy, which led to the huge increase in the popularity of other messaging services, including Telegram and Signal. Since then, a lot has happened with a bunch of stories for explaining its new policy to the layman to being under government scrutiny; these new features seem to be an attempt to convince users to accept its updated privacy policy.
Can someone guarantee that video calls in the desktop version are more secured than mobile ones? That is, everything is bugged, recorded and stored on servers that any schoolchild can hack? Why do people keep using these apps when there are safer alternatives like Utopia p2p u.is ?