By: Nick Gambino
WhatsApp has built its reputation on privacy and usability. One of the ways they’ve maintained their rep for being super secure is by making it hard to use the app on more than one device at a time. And while this may have been an inconvenience for some, if it means our messages stay between us and the intended receiver we’ve been cool with it.
Back in November 2022 they rolled out Companion Mode to a select few beta users in order to make it easier to use the popular messenger across devices without having to use inconvenient workarounds.
Now WhatsApp is rolling out Companion Mode to all Android users who are using the beta build version of WhatsApp. The new mode allows you to easily use the messaging app on multiple devices at any given time. It’ll allow you to use up to four devices at once without any cross-data issues. This includes using phones, tablets or computers.
Companion Mode isn’t available to iOS users yet but hopefully that will change soon. If you are using iOS as your primary device you can still install WhatsApp on a secondary Android device. You just can’t do the flip of that and use iOS as your secondary device.
If you want to start using Companion Mode, you have to download the WhatsApp beta version from the Google Play Store. When you launch it select “Link a device” from the overflow menu on the registration screen. Then go to Settings in your primary device and hit “Linked devices.” Now all you have to do is point the camera in your primary device at the QR code in your second device and you’re good to go.
We’ll probably see this roll out more widely in the next couple months and fingers crossed we see an iOS version of Companion Mode as well.
