By June 2016, the company’s blog reported more than 100 million voice calls per day were being placed on WhatsApp. In October 2024, WhatsApp expanded their chat filter feature, adding the ability for users to create custom lists that contain specific chats of their choice. In October 2020, WhatsApp rolled out a feature allowing users to mute both individuals and group chats forever. In March 2024, Meta announced that WhatsApp would let third-party messaging services enable interoperability with WhatsApp, a requirement of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Local users can text special numbers in the app to launch an in-app shopping process, where they can order groceries.

Supported Features

It became the world’s most popular messaging application in 2015, with 900 million users, and had more than 2 billion active users worldwide in February 2020. As of May 2025, the service had 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most used messenger app. It allows users to send text messages, voice messages, and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.

WhatsApp released a statement saying that “the feature is working properly”, and that images stored in the camera roll cannot be deleted due to Apple’s security layers. In September 2019, WhatsApp was criticized for its implementation of a ‘delete for everyone’ feature. In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption and earned a 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Secure Messaging Scorecard”. End-to-end encryption was only fully implemented in April 2016 after a two-year process.

Version 25.35.72

However, the company did not reveal the names of the end users, which according to research by Citizen Lab include, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates. In March 2019, WhatsApp released a guide for users who had installed unofficial modified versions of WhatsApp and warned that it may ban those using unofficial clients. In September 2022, a critical security issue in WhatsApp’s Android video call feature was reported. This is reportedly not an isolated occurrence, as federal agencies can use the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to covertly track users without submitting any probable cause or linking a user’s number to their identity. The app collected data on who the users contacted and how often, and when and how they were using the app. In January 2022, an unsealed surveillance application revealed that WhatsApp started tracking seven users from China and Macau in November 2021, based on a request from US DEA investigators.

WhatsApp Web

The acquisition was influenced by the data provided by Onavo, Facebook’s research app for monitoring competitors and trending usage of social activities on mobile phones, as well as startups that were performing “unusually well”. Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media. Some time in 2013 WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara–based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok, a video and voice calling app. By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. To cover the cost of sending verification texts to users, WhatsApp was changed from a free service to a paid one. This new facility, to Koum’s surprise, was used by users to ping “each other with jokey custom statuses like, ‘I woke up late’ or ‘I’m on my way.'” Fishman said, “At some point it sort of became instant messaging”.

• On January 18, 2016, WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum announced that it would no longer charge users a $1 annual subscription fee, in an effort to remove a barrier faced by users without payment cards.
• The enforcement of the privacy policy was postponed from February 8 to May 15, 2021, WhatsApp announced they had no plans to limit the functionality of the app for those who did not approve the new terms.
• In July 2021, WhatsApp announced forthcoming support for end-to-end encryption for backups stored in Facebook’s cloud.
• In 2023, WhatsApp replaced the Electron-based apps with native versions for their respective platforms.
• Since then, linked devices support has expanded and more information is written in the Platform Support part of this article.

The idea, he said, is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use – “a 911 for the internet”. Sequoia Capital received an approximate 5,000% return on its initial investment. At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history. On February 19, 2014, one year after the venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) agreed to acquire the company for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. That year, the company had $148 million in expenses and a net loss of $138 million. In April 2011, Sequoia Capital invested about $8 million for more than 15% of the company, after months of negotiation by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.

imo-International Calls & Chat

Engadget called the revamped feature “WhatsApp’s version of an AIM away message” and likened it to Instagram’s and Facebook’s Notes. Prior to the update, the feature was “largely hidden within the apps menus” and difficult to find, with the reason for updating being that WhatsApp wanted the feature to be used more often. According to WhatsApp, this update was made for the incoming Christmas period for users to inform their contacts on their activities during the holidays. WhatsApp also introduced chat filters, allowing users to sort their chats by All, Unread or Groups. In April 2024, an AI-powered “Smart Assistant” became widely available in WhatsApp, allowing users to ask it questions or have it complete tasks such as generating images.

Requires update but won’t download

Koum then hired a friend in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop a BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later. Although Acton was working on another startup idea, he decided to join the company. Koum updated WhatsApp so that everyone in the user’s network would be notified when a user’s status changed.

Data Linked to You

WhatsApp Web is accessed through web.whatsapp.com and access is granted after the user scans their personal QR code through their mobile WhatsApp client. In November 2025, WhatsApp announced that they would update their About feature, which allows users to add a short message to explain what they are doing. In December 2024, WhatsApp introduced a reverse image search feature, allowing users to verify image authenticity directly within the app using Google Search. The company also announced plans to implement reactions, the ability for administrators to delete messages in groups and voice calls up to 32 participants.

• In May 2016, some WhatsApp users were reported to have been tricked into downloading a third-party application called WhatsApp Gold, which was part of a scam that infected the users’ phones with malware.
• In September 2017 WhatsApp announced a forthcoming business platform which will enable companies to provide customer service to users.
• In November 2024, the ability to transcribe voice messages was added, allowing users to read out what was said in a voice message, rather than listening to the audio.
• Channels were initially only available to users in Colombia and Singapore, then later Egypt, Chile, Malaysia, Morocco, Ukraine, Kenya and Peru before becoming widely available in September 2023.
• The app collected data on who the users contacted and how often, and when and how they were using the app.
• In August 2022, WhatsApp launched an integration with JioMart, available only to users in India.

In 2016, WhatsApp was accused of copying features from a then-unreleased version of iMessage. According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp “has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines”. On June 13, 2013, WhatsApp announced that they had reached their new daily record by processing 27 billion messages. In October 2020, Facebook announced the introduction of pricing tiers for services offered via the WhatsApp Business API, charged on a per-conversation basis. In 2015, some third-party WhatsApp clients that were reverse-engineering the WhatsApp mobile app, received a whats the legal drinking age in russia cease and desist to stop activities that were violating WhatsApp legal terms.

WhatsApp was announced to be the 3rd most downloaded mobile phone app of the decade 2010–2019. In December 2019, WhatsApp announced that a new update would lock out any Apple users who had not updated to iOS 9 or higher and Samsung, Huawei, Sony and Google users who had not updated to version 4.0 by February 1, 2020. In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users.

Brazil

Facing criticism, WhatsApp postponed the update to May 15, 2021, and had no plans to limit functionality of users, nor nag users who did not approve the new terms. This led many users to delete WhatsApp and instead use services such as Signal and Telegram. In the same month, WhatsApp began testing a feature to help users find out more information and context about information they receive to help combat misinformation. The company also reported that Windows Phone operating systems would no longer be supported after December 31, 2019. On January 18, 2016, WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum announced that it would no longer charge users a $1 annual subscription fee, in an effort to remove a barrier faced by users without payment cards. By early January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly users and over 30 billion messages every day.

Some devices using dual SIMs may not be compatible with WhatsApp, though there are unofficial workarounds to install the app. Similarly to WhatsApp for web, Windows, Mac, and smartwatches, the iPad is a type of linked device that connects and syncs to WhatsApp running on a smartphone. WhatsApp has been officially supported for iPads and its iPadOS since May 27, 2025. The Windows version is based on UWP while the Mac version is a port of the iOS version using Catalyst technology. Later on, it also added support for iOS, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia S60 (Symbian).

Channels were initially only available to users in Colombia and Singapore, then later Egypt, Chile, Malaysia, Morocco, Ukraine, Kenya and Peru before becoming widely available in September 2023. In April 2022, WhatsApp announced undated plans to roll out a Communities feature allowing several group chats to exist in a shared space, getting unified notifications and opening up smaller discussion groups. It was also not available for iOS users on launch, due to limitations from Apple. The web client was not standalone, and required the user’s phone to stay on and connected to the internet. In a later update on November 30, WhatsApp added a Secret Code feature, which allows those who use locked chats to enter a unique password that hides those chats from view when unlocking the app. In October 2023 they also introduced passkey support, where a user can verify their login with on-device biometrics, rather than SMS.

WhatsApp uses a “store and forward” mechanism for exchanging messages between two users. Multimedia messages are sent by uploading the image, audio or video to be sent to an HTTP server and then sending a link to the content along with its Base64 encoded thumbnail, if applicable. On November 14, 2016, WhatsApp added video calling for users using Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices. WhatsApp automatically compares all the phone numbers from the device’s address book with its central database of WhatsApp users to automatically add contacts to the user’s WhatsApp contact list.