It used to be like that but not anymore. As siblings suggested you can now use it on up to 4 (I believe) additional devices.

They used to, but that hasn't been true for a few years now.

Now it uses the Signal protocol's native multi-device capabilities, specifically in the "key per device" variant (unlike signal itself, which uses "key per account" if I'm not mistaken).

This is not true, even if the primary phone is offline you can send messages via secondary device, even whatsapp web

It’s not proxied via primary, otherwise it wouldn’t work if primary were offline

> It’s not proxied via primary, otherwise it wouldn’t work if primary were offline

That is correct, it doesn't work.

Please stop spreading misinformation that can trivially be disproved with five minutes of effort.

I just tried it. Did you?

> You can now use the same WhatsApp account on multiple devices at the same time, using your primary phone to link up to four devices. You’ll need to log in to WhatsApp on your primary phone every 14 days to keep linked devices connected to your WhatsApp account.

ref: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1317564962315842/?cms_platform=ipho...

> Use WhatsApp on your computer even when your phone is off.

ref: https://faq.whatsapp.com/378279804439436/?helpref=faq_conten...

Yes, and it works, as it has for the past few years.

So I don't need my primary device any more? I can just shut that phone down forever?

No, I think you need it to be online once every 30 days or so. That's a much weaker requirement than what you were disputing, though.

oh, i see, is it the same for facebook messenger and instagram, imessage, etc?

I don't know, I don't use those. It is for Signal, I don't think so for Instagram, since I don't think that encrypts end to end.

It's not true for Signal either. Why don't you try it for yourself instead of spreading outdated (at best) information? Signal supports native multi-device capabilities without relaying everything through the "primary" device.

Messenger seems to be properly multi-device, but you pay for this by some PIN code bullshit (maybe they removed that, I haven't seen a popup about this for over a year now?) and having to sync chat history in the background, through a process that is, of course, broken and unreliable.

I'm actually still jaded about this. Messenger worked fine before they broke it by introducing E2EE; it took years for them to fix the problems this caused (at least the ones that were immediately user-perceptible).

yeah messenger still has the pin code thingy, i'm curious why they do it at all that way, can't you just have your keys on fb servers encrypted with another set of keys derived from your password, which is much stronger than a 4-6 digit key?

It's still broken if you're like me and you clear cookies

"Let's take people's years-long history between each other and just utterly break it. Why? 'privacy'" but they've never cared about it, they're opportunistic fucks. It's Zuckerberg's company to do with it "as he wishes" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818