I’m at a conference this week for my day job. I’m working a booth and doing demos, the whole schmoozing thing. It’s a living.
The organizing team I’m working with said that they want to connect on the ground, not by Slack, or text, or anything, but using WhatsApp.
Why? They say it’s just better for this type of thing.
So, like always, I look to see if it’s possible to use WhatsApp on a non-mobile device.
And, it turns out that WhatsApp is actually more annoying than a standard, mobile-only app.
Here’s what I found. And what I didn’t find.
What’s WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is a messenger tool, allowing for both text message and voice calls. It is currently owned by our overlords at Facebook.
It’s tremendously popular, with over a billion and a half users. One of the benefits of the service is that it allows for end-to-end encryption, meaning that unlike standard text messages, your messages can’t be seen by others.
It’s unclear why my team wants to use WhatsApp specifically, but it’s not really for me to push back on their workflow. The tech world is filled with good ideas with bad implementation, bad ideas with good implementation, or bad ideas with bad implementation (anyone remember Google Wave?).
WhatsApp Web (kind of)
WhatApp’s was designed as a mobile app, requiring a smartphone to run. But after a bit of digging, I saw that WhatsApp also has a web-based version, WhatsApp Web.
Maybe this would be easier than I thought!
Except here’s the irritating part: to use WhatsApp Web, you need to be logged on to WhatsApp on your phone.
Grrr. ðŸ˜
Sighing with my practiced sigh, I fired up Andy, my mobile emulator on my laptop. I figure if I need to be connected via “phone” I could use that and then log on to WhatsApp Web. I just wanted to use a browser. Is that so hard to ask?
So I installed WhatsApp, downloading it from an APK download site so I don’t have to be tracked. I signed up with a phone number I don’t use very often (and that doesn’t ring on my physical phone), and, after a few minutes, I was in!
So with that, I was ready to try WhatsApp Web. I logged in and saw this:
Really? WhatsApp Web not only requires you to have your mobile phone activated, but you have to actually take a picture of the screen with your phone to log in.
Why? Is that not the dumbest user experience ever? Why not we just go further and require a call to the developers and ask them to let you in? Why not mail a postcard too? What problem are we trying to solve here?
I tried every which way to let Andy get access to my screen to take a screenshot, but to no avail.
So I’m unable to use WhatsApp without a smartphone. Looks like that’s another entry on the list.
I can still use it WhatsApp with the emulator, but that still feels like a fail.
If anyone has gotten this to work in a different way, I’d love to hear it. And hey WhatsApp, why not make a more inclusive, less contrived user experience while you’re at it?
Or better yet, let’s just switch to Telegram.
UPDATE: I got my internal webcam to work! But I can’t point it at my screen, obviously, so my next idea is to print out the QR code quickly before it expires (flipping it in a photo editor) and then put the page in front of the webcam to see if it works. It’s crazy, but that’s what we have to do around here. I’ll report back.
