Using WhatsApp on a PC is possible. The most popular tricks consist of installing an Android emulator such as Bluestacks ( Bluestacks brings Android applications to Windows 8 ) or using solutions for the virtualization of the Android operating system such as Genymotion ( Install Android on Windows PC with Genymotion ).
You can also use another reason to use an instant messaging client compatible with Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone, and Symbian mobile devices.To use WhatsApp on a PC, you can use the well-known Pidgin messaging software: it all boils down to adding a DLL library developed by third parties to the Pidgin working directory and using the WART application (an acronym for WhatsApp Registration Tool ), which allows you to register an account on the WhatsApp network.
The first step is installing the Pidgin messaging client, which can be downloaded free from this page. Once the installation is complete, you will have to download the latest version of the WhatsApp Purple library, which can be downloaded by simply clicking here. The proposed link allows you to download the most updated DLL library version, which you can check by connecting to this page.
At the time of writing, the latest version of the library is as of 07/31/2014. However, we suggest that you periodically check the release of the most recent releases. The WhatsApp Purple library ( last-whatsapp.dll ), presented by its developer in this article, must be manually copied to the %Program Files%\Pidgin\plugins folder of Pidgin. The last step is to fetch WART from this address. The latest version of WART at the time of this writing is 1.7.2.0.
However, we suggest you connect to this page to check the availability of new releases. In a Windows environment, a prerequisite for using WART is the presence, on the system in use, of the Microsoft .NET 4.0 Framework package. WART allows you to supervise the registration procedure on the WhatsApp network: to proceed, enter your telephone number (mobile user) in the Phone Number field and select the SMS option.
In this way, you will receive – from WhatsApp – an SMS containing the code for activating the messaging client. As is known, in fact, WhatsApp – as well as other applications of its same category – does not use any username for authentication but relies solely on mobile telephone numbers. In the Phone Number field, the telephone number must be entered by prefixing the international prefix 39. For example, if you use the number 335012345, you must type 39335012345.
At this point, click on the central Request code button and wait for the receipt of the confirmation code via SMS. The six-digit code received via SMS must therefore be introduced in the WART Code field by eliminating the central dash. By clicking on the Confirm code button, WART will display the password ( Retrieve a password box ), which can then be used to access the WhatsApp network using Pidgin.
To avoid making mistakes when entering the password, we suggest highlighting it in the Retrieve password box and then pressing the CTRL+C key combination. Now it’s time to launch the Pidgin instant messaging client. Pidgin is a highly versatile application that supports various protocols and can also be used, for example, to communicate with your contacts on Facebook ( Facebook Chat: chatting without opening Facebook ).
Therefore, after starting Pidgin, you need to create a new account by clicking on the Add button (Account menu, Manage Accounts ). From the list of supported protocols, select WhatsApp, specify your telephone number as username (already specified previously in WART), not forgetting the international prefix, and then enter the password revealed by WART.
In the Local Alias field, you can specify a name of your choice: it will later be used to recognize the WhatsApp account within Pidgin. By clicking on Add, the WhatsApp account will be configured within Pidgin.
WhatsApp On PC With Pidgin: Server Closed The Connection
Some readers have reported that in mid-November 2014, by connecting with Pidgin to the WhatsApp network, the instant messaging client started returning the error message Server closed the connection. To solve the problem, it is sufficient – in a Windows environment – to open the %appdata%\.purple\account.XML file with a standard text editor (Notepad is fine).
Subsequently, inserting the string c2.whatsapp.net in correspondence with the server entry will be necessary. In correspondence with the string resource, two lines below, you must specify Android-2.31.151-443. Finally, it should be noted that WhatsApp does not save the contact list on the server side. To communicate with your Pidgin contacts, manually recreate this list locally (only the groups will appear in Pidgin).
Update 11/24/2014: Whatsapp has introduced support for end-to-end encryption in the latest application versions: Secure WhatsApp: how to activate encryption. Using the trick illustrated on this page, you will no longer receive messages from those who have installed the latest release of the application. There is currently no solution available.
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