The browser version of WhatsApp has spent a decade as the compromise option — fine for typing, useless the moment someone wanted to talk. That ended today. WhatsApp announced that users can now make and receive audio and video calls, one-on-one and group, directly from WhatsApp Web with no app download required.
It is a small change with a specific audience: anyone on a locked-down work laptop, a shared library machine, or a Linux desktop that never got a proper WhatsApp client.
The company is pitching it at exactly those people — college students on shared computers, employees whose IT policy blocks installs — and says browser calls carry the same screen sharing, reactions, and a dedicated Calls tab with full history and favourites available elsewhere. Calls made on the web are "end-to-end encrypted — with no time limits and at no cost."
Four other features landed alongside it, and read as a set, they say more than the headline does.
- Call Transfer moves an active group call between devices without hanging up — start on a phone, hand it off to WhatsApp Web or Desktop when you get to a bigger screen, or back again.
- Waiting Room holds participants outside a group call until the host lets them in, and activates when you generate a call link with "Require approval to join" switched on.
- QuickHD delivers high-definition video in the opening seconds instead of ramping up
- Noise Suppression strips ambient sound from your outgoing audio and can be toggled mid-call from in-call settings.
Chat app, or meeting software?
Waiting rooms, host approval, device handoff, screen sharing. Strip the WhatsApp branding off that list, and it is a conferencing product. Encryption still runs on the Signal protocol, and group calls cap at 32 participants across web, mobile and desktop. Google Meet and Zoom allow 100, even on their basic tiers, so this is not a town-hall tool. It is a very good tool for a five-person team that already lives in a WhatsApp group.
The timing is worth noting. This is the first significant calling release under Kunal Shah, the CRED founder Meta installed as WhatsApp's head in June, succeeding Will Cathcart, alongside a $900 million financing round for the Indian fintech. India is WhatsApp's largest market with over 500 million users, and it is full of small businesses running operations out of group chats on borrowed hardware. Removing the install requirement removes the last reason those conversations happen anywhere else.
Zoom, for its part, is not collapsing — fiscal 2026 revenue came in at $4.87 billion, up 4.4% year over year — but growth in the low single digits leaves little room for a free competitor eating the bottom of the market.
What to do about it
The feature to actually configure is the Waiting Room. Call links use unique URLs, stay live for 30 days of inactivity, and anyone holding one may be able to join, which is how uninvited guests end up in calls. Turn on "Require approval to join" before you share a link, not after.
Noise Suppression and QuickHD apply on their own once your account receives them. Everything here is rolling out gradually rather than flipping on for all users at once, so an empty call button on web.whatsapp.com today means wait, not broken.