WhatsApp:

As one of our biggest requests, we’re excited to announce that WhatsApp is now available on iPad.[...]

We’ve made WhatsApp for iPad ideal for multitasking so you can get more done. Take advantage of iPadOS multitasking features such as Stage Manager, Split View, and Slide Over to view multiple apps at once, so you can send messages while browsing the web, or research options for a group trip while on a call together. WhatsApp also works with your Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil.

One of the weird things about Meta’s companywide obstinate refusal to adapt its iOS apps for iPadOS is that for WhatsApp, they’ve had a fairly decent Mac app for years. Surely it was less work to adapt their iOS app for iPadOS than it was to create a passable Mac app using Catalyst.

Famously, Instagram doesn’t support iPad screen sizes. You can run and use the iPhone version of Instagram on iPads — and I’m guessing tens of millions of people do — but it’s the clumsy thing where it launches as an iPhone-sized window in the middle of the big iPad display, and you can hit the “double arrows” button to zoom the window to 2× size. You can also use Instagram via the web, on either Mac or iPad, and it’s a pretty full-featured app-like experience.

What was frustrating about WhatsApp’s lack of iPad support until now is that you just couldn’t use WhatsApp at all from an iPad, other than as a web app. Because of the way WhatsApp handles security, you’re really only able to sign in to one “primary” device at a time, and that device must be a phone. Then, what you do to use WhatsApp on other supported platforms is set up those other devices as “linked devices” from the WhatsApp app on your primary phone. WhatsApp still doesn’t let you use the same account from more than one phone, which is highly frustrating for those of us with somewhat unusual edge cases like writing reviews of new devices. WhatsApp’s phone apps — for both iOS and Android — can only serve as primary devices. There’s no way to use one phone as “primary” and use WhatsApp on a second phone as a linked device. I’d go nuts if iMessage worked that way. But that’s why, prior to Meta creating a proper iPad app for WhatsApp, you couldn’t just launch the iPhone app on iPad. [Update, 7 June: Turns out, WhatsApp added support for using phones as linked devices two years ago. We regret the error.]

Mark Gurman reported over the weekend that proper iPad support for Instagram is forthcoming too:

Fifteen years after the first iPad went on sale, WhatsApp is now on the tablet. And, yes, it’s just a precursor to the most highly anticipated iPad app ever: Instagram. I’m told that employees on the Meta Platforms Inc. campus are actively testing Instagram for the iPad and that development work is full steam ahead.