It’s ironic: WhatsApp is the most used messaging service in USA, but at the same time it is the most complicated to configure and integrate into our devices. Using it well on the iPhone involves knowing how to distinguish between iCloud backup copies, those of the application in iCloud, and knowing how to prevent our chats from taking up too much space.
And among all these complications, there is also the power use WhatsApp from Apple Watch. Few people clearly know if there is an official application or if there is some kind of special integration of the service with the smartwatch, but the truth is that we can use it entirely from the watch. We are going to dispel the doubts and we are going to tell you what is the easiest method to install WhatsApp on our Apple Watch.
Using WhatsApp on Apple Watch: It’s not an app, it’s a setting
Let’s solve the riddle: there is no official WhatsApp app for the Apple Watch. Therefore, the functionality is limited to receiving the notifications that we have on the iPhone on the watch and interacting with them.
How can we enable this? Most likely, it’s already enabled by default, but you can check it if you think you’re not getting these notifications. All you need to do is enter the Watch app on your iPhone and enter the ‘Notifications’ section to link the app to the watch:
There you will find a list of apps that can show their notifications on the Apple Watch. Scroll down and check that WhatsApp has its active notifications:
That’s all you have to do, at the official level there is nothing else. Obviously make sure do not disturb mode is not enabled, as this may be a likely cause for not receiving notifications. And for everything to work, remember that you must also have active WhatsApp notifications on iOS. You can check it from the “Notifications” section in the settings.
When someone writes you a message on WhatsApp, the Apple Watch will start syncing notifications and show you like this:
If you scroll down, you’ll see that you can tap on the “Reply” button and you’ll have two options: do it quickly with a suggestion or create your own custom reply by tapping on the “Reply” text field:
In personalized replies, you can write freehand on the Apple Watch screen or dictate with a voicemail message converted to text, and you can also include emojis:
Managing WhatsApp notifications from the Apple Watch will not be used to write long replies, but it it’s very handy when the answer to a message can be a “Yes”, a “No” or a quick emoji. Especially when we are cycling, for example, and using the iPhone is a more complicated task than normal.
The alternative: WatchChat for Apple Watch
As we said, since there is no official WhatsApp app, we can’t have all functions officially. But there are developers who have managed to pull this off, unofficially packing an entire WhatsApp client into an Apple Watch app.
This is the case of WatchChat, a third-party application that you can install on the Apple Watch and with which, in addition to notifications, you can send voice messages, see status updates and even watch videos sent to you via WhatsApp from the watch herself. You can download it for free from the App Store, its in-app purchases are only meant to trick you into tipping the developers.
