We’ve been talking about this for several years. For some time, WhatsApp has been testing the possibility of linking a single account to several smartphones, internally and then in beta. This is a real revolution for the app, which has long refused to abide by this exercise for fear of undermining its image of secure messaging.
But today the wait is over. Indeed, the world’s most popular herald has finally announced that the feature will soon be generally available. If the latter could take a few days to arrive on your smartphone, you may be asking yourself a few questions about how this works. Here are some answers.
Multi-device on WhatsApp, how does it work?
Until now, it was perfectly possible to connect to WhatsApp on several devices. As a matter of fact, there is a web and desktop version of the application where it is possible to connect via phone number. But that’s exactly where it goes wrong: a WhatsApp account can only be linked to a single phone number, it was impossible to connect to a secondary smartphone.
It is this limitation that came to take care of the last update of the messaging system. Thanks to the latter, WhatsApp finally lets you connect up to 4 smartphones to a single account. Meta also states that each device will connect independently; this means that all messages and calls will benefit from end-to-end encryption which is the main selling point of the app.
Also, if the main smartphone to which you will connect the others is inactive for too long, all smartphones will be automatically disconnected to ensure account security.
Connecting multiple smartphones to one WhatsApp account
Now that we’ve seen the basics of multi-device on WhatsApp, it’s time to learn how to link multiple smartphones to a single account. The method is relatively similar on Android and iOS. Here’s how to proceed:
on Android
- Open on your primary smartphone What’s up
- Hungry scroll menu located in the upper right corner of the screen
- Press Connected devices
- push button Connect a device
- Unlock your smartphone. Depending on your settings, you will need to use either biometric authentication anyone your PIN code
- Open on your secondary smartphone What’s up
- Follow the instructions until you see it. QR code on the screen
- Scan the QR code with your main smartphone
on iOS
- Open on your primary smartphone What’s up
- click Settings at the bottom right of your screen.
- Press Connected devices
- push button Connect a device
- Unlock your smartphone. Depending on your settings, you will need to use either biometric authentication anyone your PIN code
- Open on your secondary smartphone What’s up
- Follow the instructions until you see it. QR code on the screen
- Scan the QR code with your main smartphone
Just repeat this process for all smartphones you want to link to your account. Be careful though, note that this feature is limited to 4 smartphones for now!
