WhatsApp’s Home windows app is about to get a lot slower for PC customers

Meta, the proprietor of WhatsApp, is planning to switch the present Home windows app for a less complicated internet wrapper model.

In keeping with Home windows Newest, the most recent beta model of WhatsApp for PC customers will abandon the native Home windows UWP framework in favor of an app that’s constructed on Edge’s Chromium-based WebView2 expertise. The brand new variant is, in impact, a stripped-down internet browser that reveals the online model of WhatsApp in a desktop app window.

What does this imply in sensible phrases? An easier consumer interface, a modified notification system, extra primary settings, and weaker integration with Home windows. Nonetheless, the beta model does embody help for WhatsApp Channels and enhanced Standing and Communities options.

Primarily based on checks by Home windows Newest, the brand new WhatsApp PC app “makes use of roughly 30% extra RAM than the present native app” and reveals a number of notable variations together with “slower efficiency.”

Why the change? Most probably to ease growth efforts. With an online wrapper, Meta can focus sources on growing a single model of WhatsApp and deploy it cross-platform utilizing internet wrappers, as a substitute of sustaining a separate Home windows-native model with its personal code.