iPhone users can now set WhatsApp as their default calling and texting app | Hacker News Reader

iPhone users can now set WhatsApp as their default calling and texting app

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81 pointstaubek72 comments

Thank you, EU.

Another W from the EU, though I'd hope Signal would be able to do the same.

They didn't need to allow it outside the EU which makes me wonder if they would have done it anyway.

Probably easier to allow for everyone than maintain a branched feature set. This is why strict regulation in one place (such as vehicle emissions rules in California) can propagate changes throughout the world.

Credit should probably go more to large markets like India and LatAm where texting is literally = Whatsapp. This would be an absolutely sane commercial decision for breaking into those countries.

(as someone who doesn't use an iphone or whatsapp) What's the purpose of this? Surely if you want to call a phone number you want to make a phone call?

In some countries there are mobile plans with "free WhatsApp/Facebook/etc", but limited or paid regular calls/messages/data.

Because pretty much everyone who isn’t from the US is on WhatsApp, and voip calls quality is infinitely better than normal voice calls.

I either use FaceTime or WhatsApp.

but most phone numbers you are clicking on a web page (the cited use case) won't have a whatsapp account behind it

Are you sure about that?

Could imagine that countries like India the majority of buisneses also have an whatsapp account.

Never tried it, but it seems that calling a regular non-account via whatsapp will still work. But routed through watsapp servers. If someone can confirm or deny that, would be cool.

No, overseas most do and it's endless frustrating right now:

1. Long press on the phone number, but don't tap it otherwise it calls

2. Choose Copy phone number

3. Create a contact

4. Refresh WhatsApp by quitting and reopening

5. Find the contact on WhatsApp and call

If you're calling multiple companies for bookings or quotes, repeat this over and over.

FYI you can go to wa.me/<phone-number> on your browser to start a WhatsApp conversation without having to create a new contact.

Even more, there are convenient Shortcuts for messaging a number on WhatsApp quickly, implemented through the same wa.me OpenURL action.

Apple is to blame for many things, but the fact that if whatsapp has access to your contact list you can't start a conversation with any phone number in an easy way is entirely up to them.

This said, it's good to see that apple is slowly adding things so basic that it's baffling they are not there since years.

Do not know things on Iphone side but in android I justs end the device to myself and click the number,then it gives option to chat via whatsapp.

not the case in europe at all, hence my comment. you guys should travel more.

That's hugely incorrect, most of Asian, Europe have whatsapp numbers listed, not phone numbers.

That doesn’t really align with my experience in Europe or Japan - do you have a particular country in mind?

that's 100% wrong, i live in europe in a whatsapp country and no listed phone number EVER has an associated whatsapp account

so don't downvote me if you're in india and certain countries in sa asia where that is the case but that's not the whole world outside the us

The majority of times when somebody calls me over WhatsApp, I can't properly hear them and need to hang up and switch to a regular call, which works properly

I do the opposite

You or them have some issue with device, whatsapp calls work perfectly fine for past 15 years. If needed you can quickly switch to video, good luck with normal calls.

Back home 5g signal is weak, so my phone does even regular calls over wifi/network, then you are 1:1 with whatsapp or similar apps. No more missed or interrupted calls due to blip in coverage.

Here in Europe I know exactly 0 people who don't have it, even online contact forms of various webs and companies have direct whatsapp contact.

> Here in Europe

Europe is not homogeneous... I rarely see WhatsApp integration in Switzerland.

But my phone providers support "Call over WiFi", and calls that go through that are crystal clear. But it's curious stuff, if the calls are being routed through my home WiFi (or when I'm on the road: over my data SIM, which is from a different provider), what the hell am I paying them X cents/minute for?

> what the hell am I paying them X cents/minute for?

Because they can get away with it. They don't care, they're the phone company and have a monopoly.

With this change, you can finally get similar UX with a third-party app independent of your phone company.

East Asia isn't on Whatsapp. In most of South-East Asia it's also not the #1. That makes for ~2 billion people.

You can make it a video call, or invite other friends in. Even when the called person is on android. I'm not sure if that would work with regular call. (iOS to iOS probably has this already, I don't know)

Also you are connected via wifi, it's free. Even when you are in another country.

For a long long time I had a prepaid sim, and would just call my out of country family on whatsApp / Signal from home. Basically did not pay anything for it.

Your WhatsApp's user ID is your phone number, so it makes sense to be able to use WhatsApp directly whenever you have a "Call" button somewhere in the UI. Same for messages.

More abstractly: maybe you want to pick your preferred app to do it with instead of being artificially prevented by the phone's maker.

>> (as someone who doesn't use an iphone or whatsapp) What's the purpose of this? Surely if you want to call a phone number you want to make a phone call?

Outside of major cities in the US, mobile coverage can become spotty. However, most people have Wifi, so I almost always use WhatsApp Audio or Facetime Audio at home for this reason (when the other party supports it.)

My mobile company (O2 in the UK) will route calls over WiFi if there is no mobile reception.

While still making you pay for it. Also, they often prevent foreign IPs from connecting (to juice those extortionate roaming fees), so this wouldn't work abroad.

This opens the door to decoupling the "phone" functionality from your SIM card and telecom carrier monopoly. You can use any VoIP app now as your primary phone.

My mother has no idea how to call me from an android phone via phone, and instead always calls via Whatsapp.

As to reiterate that I have the reverse problem, like my mother, too:

As someone who has an iPhone and Whatsapp, often I fail to find a button to call people, and use whatever app I am currently using instead, even if that annoys me. But the UI is to complex and phoning people is a hidden/dark pattern in said apps. Or in Signal, I have contacts without phone numbers, so there is no possibility to call anyhow.

Would love to be able to do this, but with Signal.

We’ve already been over this, JD…

JD, no couch! Thank you.

Signal had this ability in Android, but removed it a couple of years ago. To handle phone calls and SMS messages the app must handle the normal (GSM) ones too, and Signal said it could lead to confusion on whether the call/message was encrypted.

Can’t you simply show encrypted communications with a visual cue to clue users into the difference?

This would be a killer feature for Signal. I just checked to see if I could do it.

Cool, I hope I can set Google Photos as my default too.

Why would anyone use Google photos to begin with?

Because it's the best option I've seen and it's one they haven't ruined?

Apart from the fact that they probably use your photos for training, it's pretty good. Searching by people, locations, text or objects in the photo is awesome (I know Apple recently added something like that, but Google have had it for years).

Also the storage allocation is shared with Google Drive, so if you already use/pay for it, it's included.

I use it to back up my photos and create shared albums during vacations.

Because it's the benchmark that other photo app alternatives strive to be. It's a nightmare privacy wise, but Google built the best solution and a lot of iPhone users just assume Apple was the leader without trying anything else.

Thankfully there is immich which is working hard to duplicate the feature set without the privacy invasion.

Google Photos strips the metadata from your photos in unpredictable ways. It is a UX nightmare and an awful backup solution.

It’s dreadful in the UK. The face matching is on device and just doesn’t work. I can’t search by detected objects. It doesn’t integrate with iMessage for sending large batches of photos via iCloud.

> It's a nightmare privacy wise

Privacy and random cloud AI not looking at my photos is my #1 criteria when picking a cloud photo storage system

Cheaper than iCloud, superior tools, less issues with connectivity.

I don't think Google Photos should be the default app for calls /j

Has anyone found a sandboxing/muzzling method yet for WhatsApp requiring access to all of your phone contacts to function? I have overseas family that I'd like to keep in touch with, they all seem to use WhatsApp, and I can't get them to use Signal instead. I've tried installing it a number of times, but as soon as I see that it requests Contact List permission and refuses to move forward if I deny it, that gets a big NOPE from me, and I uninstall it.

"If you allow partial access, you'll be prompted to manually select which of your phone’s contacts you want WhatsApp to have access to. In this case, some contact names may not appear when you try to call or message them on WhatsApp. If you create a new contact in your phone’s address book with limited access, it won’t show on WhatsApp until you grant access for this contact in your settings. You can change access at any time by going to your phone's Settings > WhatsApp > Contacts."

https://faq.whatsapp.com/1173713140597106/?cms_platform=ipho...

Sorry, I should've clarified my last installation attempt was on Android, not iPhone. I don't see an equivalent article, which makes me suspect that this is not an option on Android.

GrapheneOS has the functionality "Contact Scopes" in the same vein as "Storage Scopes" that only provides access to the specific contacts and files you allow.

Access to contacts for iOS apps is no longer all or nothing. You can grant an app access to only specific contacts. This is what I do for WhatsApp.

Also, I know in the past I used WhatsApp without contacts access. It just showed phone numbers instead of names, but it was functional.

I was wondering why there is only Y/N to choose from.

In Xposed Framework of Android, I can give a fake permission that allow to read empty contact list. Do we (or manufacturer) need to maintain the trust between APP and OS?

GrapheneOS has "Contact Scopes" which allows you to expose a subset of contacts to an app while it believes it has full access to the whole book.

https://grapheneos.org/features#contact-scopes

I have a second google account on my phone specifically for apps that ask for my contact and calendar data. I download the app using that account on the play store, and give it access only to the contacts/calendar of that account. So no data given.

I have the google assistant on that account as well, so I didn't have to turn on several of the tracking options of my primary account but can still use the functionality of the assistant.

Every crypto/stock investment scam I have been exposed to via Facebook Ads has used a whatsapp group to communicate with victims. Great to hear it will be easier to be victimized now.

If you say anything derogatory about Zuck it disconnects.

Still can't have 2 WhatsApp accounts on iPhone, though.

eek, giving Facebook any permission is not ideal

Does it work with TOTP codes like Messages? That's my benchmark. Google Voice does not.

I assume you're talking about SMS 2FA code. TOTP doesn't require any networking - it's just an HMAC of the current time using a preshared key. Whether or not SMS 2FA works with a VoIP number is a decision made by the 2FA provider. The most paranoid of them (usually banks IME) will not send 2FA codes to VoIP numbers - they require a for-real cellphone number provided by a cellular provider. There are some VoIP numbers that try to pretend to be this, but none of them are reliable, and AFAIK Whatsapp does not even try.

Sorry, yeah 2FA. WhatsApp already delivers 2FA codes for Meta properties. I've never had my Google Voice phone number rejected from any 2FA signup, and the codes deliver fine. But won't show up above the keyboard like Messages does.

New attack vector unlocked

Can WhatsApp use cellular?

It's proprietary.

It works well for voice with data over cellular

Will WhatsApp ever do the opposite and let me make a real phone call instead of forcing me to call using WA when I hit a contact card from a message? It’s really frustrating when data is spotty

Same here. And I am willing to pay just for this feature.

5G VoNR or 4G VoLTE is just so much better.

India, Brazil, and Indonesia iPhone sales go brrr.

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