If you needed to make a WhatsApp call, you had to answer on that handheld device, now disrupting your typing flow and held at an angle, with a big slab of glass pressed up against the side of your face as your hands stage-whistled over a keyboard. Meta is now ready to cut that cord. WhatsApp Web gains voice and video calling support for beta testers. As it continues to double down on emerging markets and the world of cheap feature phones, WhatsApp today announced that it’s rolling out to its users — including some 50 million people in India with… This is not just a cosmetic update; it’s a seismic shift in how the world’s most popular messaging app presents itself to professionals.
The Browser as a Phone
In the past, WhatsApp Web was more like a reflection. Sure, it mirrored your phone, but it didn’t have the authority to start a real-time conversation that wasn’t just text. In this update, the browser becomes an endpoint empowered to do everything. The interface, which is now being tested with a small group of beta users, places the phone and video camera icons directly in the chat header on your laptop screen. When you press it, a special window pops up — one distinct from your browser tab, allowing you to resize the box and drag it around (and keep working) while you chat. This kind of ‘picture-in-picture’ tool is essential. It means you can have a call with a co-worker and look at the spreadsheet you’re discussing on the same big screen, all at once. It turns WhatsApp from a casual chat app into a real productivity tool.
Under the Hood: Encryption and WebRTC
The technical trick here is somehow keeping that so-called “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE) for which WhatsApp is famous while still adding newbies to the mix. E2EE is trickier to implement than in a native app, too. The browser is an even more open, vulnerable world. Meta’s engineers have had to work to make the “handshake”— the digital key exchange that locks down the call so only the sender and receiver can understand it — secure even as it runs through Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. And since they are including screen sharing, it implies they are making extensive use of WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) protocols. This architecture enables browsers to stream media between themselves and eliminates the need for heavy plugin downloads. It’s light, fast — and now, finally, secure enough for Meta, according to the company.
The Beta Phase
Why only beta users? In software, voice and video are bandwidth hogs. They are susceptible to ‘jitter’ and ‘packet loss. If Meta deployed this to 2 billion users overnight, the resulting surge in data throughput would crash its web gateways. A phased rollout helps confirm that the connection is stable across multiple browsers and operating systems. They want to know what the feature is like when a user has 50 tabs open, not just 1. But for now, if you are one of the fortunate to receive the update, your desktop is that much more of a functional communications hub. For everyone else, the days of fumbling a phone while typing on a laptop are numbered.
