WhatsApp Rivals Skype, Introduces Voice, Video Calling To Desktop App

WhatsApp has introduced voice and video calling to its desktop app, a move that may rival Skype.

The company said on Thursday that the new features would enable people to answer audio and video calls from their computers.

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WhatsApp said in a blogpost that they have witnessed significant surge of people calling through their platform.

On New Year’s Eve, the company said it reached a milestone of most calls made in a single day with 1.4 billion voice and video calls.

“Answering on a bigger screen makes it easier to work with colleagues, see your family more clearly on a bigger canvas, or free up your hands to move around a room while talking,” said WhatsApp.

The new feature will work in both portrait and landscape orientation. Calling on desktop will also appear in a resizable standalone window on computer screens.

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WhatsApp said the calls would be positioned at the top of the app’s interface so that users do not lose their video chats in a browser tab or stack of open windows.

The voice and video calls on the platform would be end-to-end encrypted like messages and calling on the mobile version of the app, said the company.

WhatsApp said users will need Windows 10 with 64-bit version 1903 and newer or macOS 10.13 and more recent versions to be able to use the new features.

The features require an audio output device and microphone for voice and video calls and a camera for video calls.

The features also require an active internet connection on your computer and phone.

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