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Cover image for Why WhatsApp web doesn't work without WhatsApp on your mobile app?

Why WhatsApp web doesn't work without WhatsApp on your mobile app?

Atul Bhatt on May 22, 2021

On and off this question might have crossed your mind once in a while when you open WhatsApp on the web. Why do I need to open WhatsApp web on my...
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Shai Almog

I ran into this myself why creating a whatsapp clone a while back. The end-to-end is tricky, that's why Telegram doesn't have that problem but doesn't do end-to-end by default. Signal solved this better by sending the message to the desktop app and the device at once. That works nicely and it's a better app IMHO.

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Atul Bhatt

Telegram keeps things on their server. That's also the reason why I prefer using telegram for conversation, nothing is lost.
On the contrary, WhatsApp relies on Google drive for backups and that too keeps everything in decrypted form.

Thanks a ton. If you find it informative and easy to understand then can you please help me reach a wider audience by sharing it?
It would mean a lot. And thanks for your time reading it.

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Shai Almog

Sure. Feel free to return a favor on my blog ;-)

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James Filmer

Hey there, so just a few points I might want to just bring up that I've noticed with whatsapp. Although I may be wrong.

Messages to and from Whatsapp are only ever sent to and from our phones. Strictly...

I believe and in my experience of all the platforms and integrating etc. I believe that Whatsapp web creates a secure connection to your phones Whatsapp. Messages can be seen hitting your phone first with a notification only being triggered later.

If your phone disconnects, even for a few seconds, whatsapp web simply just says it can't send the message until the connection is restored, why would that be if it were stored on their servers.

I'm inclined to believe that the secure connection/socket to your phone is held and all communication between web is albeit via whatsapp servers, strictly to your phone. It then is sent by your phone to the recipient(s).

Additionally, delete for everyone is a time limit thing, I can't remember but I think it is up to 1 hour after sending that you can delete for everyone.

And yes, undelivered messages are kept for up to 30 days before permanently undeliverable.

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Atul Bhatt

Yeah. The same details are what I observed. When I did any operations like sending messages and other operation like deleting and other no api calls were there on whatsapp web network tab.
I was planning to see the logcat of my android device where the application is installed to verify the same.

And thanks for adding on these details that makes me more sure of it.

I'll surely release another article with more into technical details.
😀😀😀

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Sunny pranay

That is very great article.

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Atul Bhatt

Thanks a ton. If you find it informative and easy to understand then can you please help me reach a wider audience by sharing it?
It would mean a lot. And thanks for your time reading it.

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Sunny pranay

Sure thing I will do that.

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Brilliance Oparaku

Thanks a ton
This also enlightened me on some subjects related to this

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Atul Bhatt

Oh what kind, I'm curious to know😀

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Vandana

Could you please elaborate a bit on the experiment part and what is analysis of it.
Thanks in advance

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Atul Bhatt

So to be honest this experiment doesn't shows the entire picture. I wanted to add more of the experiment which I did such as checking the apis and when the whatsapp web is calling. However, I'll still explain what is the intention lying under this deleting experiment.

So what I tried to do is deleting an old message from my phone which for sure is not available on the whatsapp server as per their policies.

So if I'm deleting any message there has to be a way for whatsapp web to know which message I deleted.

I know it's not that easy to digest and I've done more reasearch on it. So I'll release an another article with more technical stuff.

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Muhammad Uzair

Nice 👍

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Atul Bhatt

Thanks Muhammad😀 I hope you'll share it with your friends so they can also get to know this mystery.
😄

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nikhilmwarrier

Great article! Keep up the great work!

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Atul Bhatt

Thanks. Sure I'll keep writing more such articles😄