WhatsApp locked chats only work on your phone, users should know this

WhatsApp Lock Chat is useful if you want to make some personal chats more private and are happy to lock them behind a PIN or biometric ID. WhatsApp already offers end-to-end encryption, which is inherently very secure, but you can still make it easy for people to view your personal chats, especially if you want to prevent them from seeing it.

In these situations, locked chat comes in handy. However, locked chats are only compatible with your phone, so if you use WhatsApp Web on a browser, locked chats are automatically visible to everyone.

WhatsApp, in its own way, has made it clear that locked chats won’t work on desktop, but you most likely missed this instruction and we wouldn’t blame you for that.

If you tap on your account profile and scroll down, WhatsApp will clearly indicate that you can or have locked chats on this device, and this applies if you have chat lock enabled on Android or iPhone. But the good news is that WhatsApp has started testing locked chats on the web client as well, and we hope the public launch isn’t that far away.

This development is a welcome relief for those who rely on web clients to manage WhatsApp text messages. When this feature eventually rolls out, it will mean it will be available across all iOS, Android and web platforms, providing a secure, synchronized experience for WhatsApp users.

WhatsApp is also working on other features, including the ability to create stickers on the web and the ability to change status updates on the desktop client, both of which have been tested by beta testers over the past few weeks.