WhatsApp – aka that place where all your massive, probably country-hopping, group chats are – will conk out on some phones and operating systems as of the start of 2020, so heads up in case this one might affect you.
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As of December 31, WhatsApp and its features will begin to stop on Microsoft Windows phones as the company has wound down developing on its operating systems. The app itself had begun to be removed from the Microsoft store from July 31.
For those with iPhones and Android phones, WhatsApp will be ceasing to work on older operating systems from February 1.
Android phones running on 2.3.7 or older and iPhones running iOS 8 or order will be able to use the app until the cutoff on Feb 1. After that, the app won’t work on your phones, and you might end up losing all of your precious group chats.
So if you’ve been ignoring that little request to update your phone’s software for a while, you might want to update it ASAP. Do it. As a treat. A little new year self-care treat.
It’ll likely be your parents who haven’t gotten a phone newer than an iPhone 7 in their pockets that need updating, do if they’re running the singular family group chat on there, maybe talk them into spending this afternoon updating their phones. You might end up on the phone to them, slowly walking them through it, and fielding a bunch of questions about it all, but they’ll thank you for it later.
If you’re not able to update your phone’s system today, or you’re one of three (3) people who own a Microsoft Windows phone, you can export your WhatsApp chat threads for safekeeping. Just click through ‘more’ > ‘info’ or ‘group info’ > ‘more’ > ’email chat history’.
Though this won’t allow you to transfer your chats across to a new, not-Microsoft phone, but at least you’ll be able to keep them in your emails so you can preserve every time someone’s been dunked on for a spelling mistake.
