WhatsApp May Soon Let You Have Multiple Accounts On The Same Phone

In the modern online community, one user may occasionally be required to wear a handful of different faces. Perhaps you have one account for posting dumb memes to your friends, another account for sharing personal news with your extended family, and yet another for managing business inquiries. To make this whole accounts rigmarole easier, some social apps allow you to swap on the fly between different accounts, without needing to log out. Unfortunately, popular chat app WhatsApp isn't one of them. Or, at least, not yet.

According to a new report from WABetaInfo, WhatsApp may soon be receiving account-switching functionality, allowing you to maintain multiple accounts on the same mobile device, and swap between them at your leisure. WABetaInfo uncovered this potential update within the WhatsApp Business beta for Android's 2.23.13.5 update, available through the Google Play Beta Program. 

Assuming this update info is genuine, you'll soon be able to keep more than one WhatsApp account on your smartphone — and manage them individually without needing to log out.

According to WABetaInfo's findings, the new update will take the form of a simple pop-up menu, similar to the account-swapping menus found in other Meta-owned social apps. Through this menu, you can add multiple accounts to your overall WhatsApp profile, then switch the one you're actively using by simply tapping on them. It's a near-full reversal of previous WhatsApp rules, which effectively stipulated that every single WhatsApp account needed to be registered to its own device, aside from registered "companion" devices.

With the ability to swap accounts on the fly, users will be able to more easily manage their various WhatsApp presences, quickly respond to notifications and comments, and generally monitor their own privacy. Additionally, while this update was uncovered in the business version of WhatsApp, WABetaInfo is fairly confident that the feature will be available to non-business users as well via WhatsApp Messenger.

The account-switching feature is still in development, so there currently is no estimated date for its release to the public. A beta version will be made available to testers in the near future, and seeing how the version that WABetaInfo uncovered appeared mostly feature-complete, it likely won't be too long before a beta and public rollout.