this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
29 points (87.2% liked)

Open Source

48947 readers
306 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
 

They make FOSS clients for many prop things, why can I find nothing on WA?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Through my entire stint having to use it in Europe, the closest I could find was a webview for the web client: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.kuenzler.whatsappwebtogo/

Sadly, they enforce use of the official client to create an account and resync whenever the web client session expires. Even once got locked out for using the official client downloaded from Aurora Store, apparently I ought to have to downloaded the APK directly from their website, if not from the play store.

Edit: I also think potential legal pressure also contributes to a FOSS client not existing. Last time someone tried making a feature-complete FOSS Instagram client, they stopped after a cease and desist from Meta.

Obligatory, I would have loved to go without anything Meta in the first place, but if you've spent any time around non-techy colleagues in Europe, you'll know how much of an uphill battle it is.

[–] mmmm@sopuli.xyz 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Last time someone tried making a feature-complete FOSS Instagram client, they stopped after a cease and desist from Meta.

Meta (Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram...) is the worst of the worst offenders for private instant messaging and humanity would be a little less miserable without it. I miss my pidgin days when one could use messenger, gtalk, jabber and whatnot and nobody gave a shit because "features" and so-called "privacy" wasn't an excuse to rob your, ahem, privacy.

Sorry for the rant