WhatsApp waves goodbye to Electron-based desktop app – Tech

Meta-owned quick messaging platform WhatsApp has officially “deprecated” its Electron-based desktop app on Windows, WABetaInfo reported Tuesday.

After the version has expired, the users will be prompted to switch to the new native app as a replacement for the deprecated version to keep using the messaging app on their websites.

The move aims to provide a more optimized, stable, and feature-rich messaging experience on desktop devices, although some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the quick transition and the temporary lack of business tools in the native app.

When users open the Electron version on Windows, they are now prompted to switch to the newly introduced native app in order to continue using WhatsApp on their desktop devices. In reality, the deprecation wasn’t so unexpected as WhatsApp notified users over 4 weeks ago by displaying a countdown directly on the app’s main screen.

Finally, this application has officially reached its end-of-life stage after years of providing a solution to use WhatsApp on a desktop device by providing users with an app based on the Electron framework.

As you can see in this screenshot, users opening the Electron-based WhatsApp Desktop application will now encounter an expiration message. This message explicitly notifies them that the app is no longer supported and that they should switch to the new native app to continue using WhatsApp on their desktop computers.

At the moment, the deprecation of the Electron app seems limited to WhatsApp Desktop for Windows as the native app is considered stable since last year.

The Electron framework allows developers to create cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies by developing a single codebase that works across different operating systems like Windows and macOS.

However, they are not really optimized since they are developed to work on different operating systems and they may use a lot of resources.