Meta, the parent company of the popular messaging app, WhatsApp, has announced a new update to the app which will enable users to log into as many as four smartphones with the same account simultaneously.
The announcement was made by the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, on his verified Facebook page on Tuesday.
In the post, Zuckerberg wrote, “Starting today [Tuesday], you can log into the same WhatsApp account on up to four phones.”
Before the Tuesday announcement, users could only log into one account on only one phone, and an attempt to log in on another phone would log the user out of the previous phone.
“One WhatsApp account, now across multiple phones” is how the messaging service describes the new feature.
According to a report, Setting up a secondary phone to use with a WhatsApp account happens after doing a fresh install of the app. Except, rather than entering user’s phone number during setup and logging in as usual, the user will instead tap a new “link to existing account” option. This will generate a QR code to be scanned by the primary WhatsApp phone via the “link a device” option in settings. The new feature works across both iOS and Android devices.
Although the original phone that signed into the WhatsApp account is considered the “primary” device, it is not necessary for it to be turned on in order to receive messages from other phones, Android tablets, or desktops. WhatsApp, however, says that it would log out other devices if the primary smartphone is inactive for more than 14 days.