Meta has quietly announced that WhatsApp for Windows 11 is moving away from its native UWP (Universal Windows Platform) app back to a Chromium-based web wrapper. This change returns the messaging app to how it operated several years ago, trading performance for development convenience.
The new WhatsApp version is presently being rolled out to beta users. It replaces the original Windows program with a WebView2-based container that effectively runs the web.whatsapp.com experience in a desktop environment. Users can identify this change by checking Task Manager, where they will notice many WebView2 subprocesses operating under WhatsApp rather than the prior native app’s lightweight process.
The transition brings the Windows app’s feature set in line with the web version, which has typically received updates ahead of the desktop application. However, this comes at the expense of speed, since the new version consumes around 30% more RAM than its native counterpart. The app now relies on Chromium’s rendering engine via Microsoft’s WebView2 technology, which is powered by Microsoft Edge.
While the user interface is essentially unchanged from the previous version, the underlying architectural change means WhatsApp will now require more system resources, much like running a Chrome browser tab. Meta’s support documentation recognizes that native apps “provide increased performance and reliability” along with better notification management, calls, screen sharing, and overall user experience.
The update is currently being distributed to WhatsApp Beta users on Windows 11. The rollout represents Meta’s strategy to maintain a single codebase across all platforms, rather than building and maintaining separate native programs for each operating system.
