WhatsApp finally gets Face ID and Touch ID support

WhatsApp’s new version for iOS has gotten a simple but important upgrade: The app now supports Apple’s Face ID face recognition tech, as well as Touch ID fingerprint scanner.

The update has gone live in WhatsApp’s version 2.19.20 for iOS, which is available to all users now. 

To turn the feature on, go to Settings > Account > Privacy and enable Screen Lock. When it’s on, you’ll need to use Touch ID or Face ID to unlock WhatsApp, though you’ll still be ably to reply to messages from notifications and answer calls, even when the app is locked. You’ll also be able to set whether you want the app to require Touch ID/Face ID immediately or after 1 minute, 15 minutes, and 1 hour. 

The feature is quite a big deal for WhatsApp, which touts end-to-end encryption and privacy/security in general as an important feature. Note, however, that both Touch ID and Face ID are less secure than using a good passphrase to protect your phone. 

Notably, Mashable’s own Ray Wong recently got the ability to use Face ID with his iOS Instagram app; Instagram confirmed to us they’re testing the feature. 

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, made the news recently when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained his plan for merging it with the company’s other two major social apps, Messenger and Instagram. One of the advantages of that would be having end-to-end encryption across all of those products. However, Zuckerberg said the plans to merge these three apps are in a really early stage and that it may not happen until 2020.