As it has always been since its premiere, one of the limitations of WhatsApp is that you cannot have the application open on two mobiles with the same account. If you do, the app will ask you about the terminal where you want to receive all the information with which you are going to send and receive messages.
But as of this week, officially this limitation is history. Because if you have WhatsApp Beta you can already try the multi-device function.
WhatsApp multi-device
Confirmed by the boys of WABetainfo and even Mark Zuckerberg himself, with the multi-device function of WhatsApp, up to four devices can be linked to an account without the need for an active Internet connection on the main device -that is, You don’t have to have your mobile on to use your WhatsApp on another device -but yes at the time of linking the devices, since in this way the chats and account data can be transferred to the other computers. Conversations are still encrypted end-to-end.
All messages will continue to have end-to-end encryption, Zuckerberg said, which is a breakthrough since you can use your account on 4 devices simultaneously registered with the same phone number and capable of receiving messages each on its own.
At the moment, only on a mobile
Short answer: We cannot use the WhatsApp account on several mobiles at the same time, but on a single terminal, at least for now. According to WABetaInfo: “We already said that WhatsApp will launch the first version of the multi-device beta only for WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp Desktop and Portal. This means that at first you will not be able to link a mobile phone like another iPhone or Android, but this function is exclusive for those platforms “. WhatsApp also confirms in a screenshot that the first multi-device version will only be compatible with those devices.
But … will the possibility of linking a second mobile phone be available in a future update? It must be said that WhatsApp was also working on a logout option that appears only on linked devices, so “it is really possible to imagine that we will also be able to link mobile devices in the future ”.
But not to begin with, since this first version of multi-device it only allows WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp Desktop and Portal to work without an active internet connection on the phone.
So you can have your WhatsApp account open on 4 devices at the same time when the function is released, which means that you can use WhatsApp on a tablet, laptop, PC and mobile by jumping from one to the other, each device with its own login so you don’t have to always depend on the phone. But on a single mobile, at least for now.
Released on WhatsApp Beta
The new feature has started unfold today, but only for “specific testers of the WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS“, so if you don’t use WhatsApp Beta, if you only use the normal version of the app, at the moment you won’t be able to test this option.
If you use WhatsApp Beta and want to find out if you are one of the lucky users chosen for the bulk test, you just have to:
1- Open WhatsApp Web / Desktop Settings from your iPhone or Android device (WhatsApp may change the name to Linked Devices in the meantime, but this does not mean you have received the function)
2- If the function is activated for your WhatsApp account, you will see a new row called “Beta multidispositivo”.
When some users doubt whether our chats are stored in the WhatsApp / Facebook cloud using the multi-device, the answer is no: WhatsApp does not store your messages after they are delivered, but when someone sends you a message, it is delivered to all your paired devices. When you create a new session, your chat history is transferred from your phone to the paired device, and this process is encrypted. When the process is complete, all keys are erased from the new paired device, and the messages are saved to the local database.
Your messages, calls, and status updates remain end-to-end encrypted, even if you join the cross-device beta program.
Encryption on the Multi-device
How does encryption work when using the multi-device? WhatsApp has decided to apply a ‘client-fanout’ method, in which the message is individually encrypted using the peer-to-peer encryption session established with each device (Device A Device B; Device A Device C; Device A Device D; etc …) and is sent to all your other companion devices and other people’s devices.
WhatsApp has also introduced various protections, in order to prevent malicious identities from secretly adding devices to someone’s account, In addition to implementing a new function to synchronize different actions that you perform in the application, for example, when you star a message from one device, it also crashes on all your linked devices, or when you archive a chat.
But there is an exception according to WABetaInfo: “When you delete or remove a chat from one device, it is not removed from all other linked devices. To guarantee this work, the server securely stores a copy of these events which can be accessed by your linked device and allincluding metadata about your events is end-to-end encrypted. The keys used to encrypt the information and metadata about those events are constantly changing“.
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