WhatsApp could add option for multiple devices per account

Damien Wilde | Apr 1 2020 - 5:11 am PT

The Facebook-owned WhatsApp appears to be working on a multiple-device feature that might let you use one telephone number across a multitude of smartphones.

Thanks to some digging by WABetaInfo, the latest WhatsApp beta update hints that you’ll be able to use your number across more than just one smartphone. For those of us that switch smartphones quite frequently, this might be a fantastic new addition that will enhance the experience of WhatsApp messaging from multiple devices.

Hints of this feature were found as long ago as November 2019, but the guys at WABetaInfo have only just been able to enable evidence of the feature with the recent beta updates. They were able to trigger pop-up, in-chat messages that reference multiple device support when you switch devices using WhatsApp.

While it’s not clear if this feature will be cross-platform, it may allow you to switch between tablet and smartphone or smartphone-to-smartphone at the very least. It’s great that we might get a proper seamless experience for WhatsApp when using multiple devices, but very little is known on when it might come to a stable build of the popular SMS replacement app.

For those with a tablet and a smartphone, we’re sure this will be a very popular addition, as it will allow you to pick up right where you left off from your larger screen. However, for those that use an iPad and an Android phone, we’re not sure how it will work in practice, or if it will be possible at all. Let’s hope that we finally get cross-platform, multi-device support in a future build of WhatsApp.