Messaging apps are one of the most frequently used apps on our phones. There’s probably not a day that goes by when most people don’t hear a ding alerting them to a new text. There’s also no shortage of messaging apps. But when it comes to the juggernauts, there are two: Meta’s WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages, the latter of which just got a big update in iOS 18.
So, how do the two apps now compare in 2024? We’ll explore this, based on five criteria: user interface, compatibility, useful features, fun factor, and privacy & security.
User Interface
Most users like their apps to have clean, uncluttered interfaces that are easy to navigate.
Without a doubt, Apple’s Messages app fulfills these requirements. When you open the app, you are immediately presented with its minimalist interface, which clearly shows a list of all your chat threads. You have a search bar at the top and can quickly tap on any thread to see its contents. Further, there is a single + button that opens a menu that lets you quickly add a photo, audio message, or location to the chat in a few taps.
WhatsApp’s user interface, on the other hand, is more convoluted. At the bottom of the app is a toolbar with five buttons: Updates, Calls, Communities, Chats, and Settings. These “Updates” and “Communities” additions can make WhatsApp feel more like a social network than a dedicated messaging app. Because features such as these are built into WhatsApp, the app is naturally more bloated.
Winner: Apple Messages
Compatibility
For a messaging app to be useful, you need to have someone to chat with. That means your friends must be using the same messaging technology as you are.
This is where Apple loses some points. If you have an iPhone, you can exchange SMS and RCS messages with people on other devices with Apple Messages. But you can only send iMessages—Apple’s proprietary version of the text message—to owners of other Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads, and Macs. iMessages (the blue bubbles and all the cool abilities that go with them) are officially limited to Apple products.
Apple doesn’t make its Messages app for Android devices. That means if you want to use just a single messaging app and be able to take advantage of all its features in every conversation, you better make sure all your friends and family are iPhone owners.
WhatsApp, on the other hand, is available on both iPhones and Android devices. That makes it super easy to communicate with the full feature set of the app with anyone, no matter what type of phone they have.
Winner: WhatsApp
Useful Features
When it comes to features, both WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages offer many of the same. For example, both apps let you send your location, photos, videos, and more with a few taps. Both apps also feature built-in GIF libraries, so you can easily insert the perfect GIF into your conversation at any given moment.
Both apps also support emoji reactions, so you can quickly slap with a “thank you” hands on their message without having to literally spell out your appreciation. Both apps also let you unsend and edit messages—a truly useful feature.
But Apple Messages also offers some useful features that WhatsApp lacks, such as the ability to schedule an iMessage to be sent at a later time. WhatsApp doesn’t offer this kind of functionality. Apple Messages also offers a safety feature called Check In that allows Messages to automatically notify your chosen contacts when you arrive home on time—or don’t.
Yet WhatsApp also offers some features that Apple’s Messages does not: the ability to archive messages, for one. In WhatsApp, you can store message threads in an archive, so they don’t clutter up your main chat screen. This is handy when you don’t want to delete a thread (say, the one with your electrician), but you don’t constantly need to see it in your main chat list, either.
Yes, archiving is an exceptionally basic feature—but that’s what makes its absence from Apple Messages so baffling, especially given how useful chat archiving is. WhatsApp also includes some other nice utilitarian features including the ability to star important messages so you can easily find them later.
Winner: WhatsApp
Fun Factor
INSERT ART “applemessagesfun.png”. Caption: Apple’s Messages app offers plenty of fun effects.
I’m the type of person who just likes to send and receive plain old messages without any fluff. However, I know many people who like to use messaging apps to express their moods or send messages with some added pizazz.
And when it comes to adding pizazz to your messages, Apple’s iOS 18 update to Messages offers a lot. Not only can you bold, italicize, underline, and strikethrough text now, but you can add animation effects to individual words in your text message—like making the word grow big or small, making it shake or explode, as well as making it ripple and jitter and more.
Other visual flairs you can add include making a chat bubble show up on the recipient’s screen under so-called “invisible ink” (but really, it looks like digital glitter that they must wipe away to see the message). There are also full-screen effects you can apply, such as making confetti rain down on the recipient’s screen when you send them a congratulations text.
WhatsApp lacks any of these types of animated effects, so if fun factor is your thing, there’s a clear winner here.
Winner: Apple Messages
Privacy & Security
The great news is that both WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages feature strong end-to-end encryption—even for chat backups in the cloud (if you enable it). This means that no one, not even Meta or Apple, can read your messages.
But Apple’s Messages offers two benefits over WhatsApp. The first is that WhatsApp still requires you to give it access to your contacts on your phone if you want to see the names of the people you are texting in the app instead of just their phone numbers. There is no technical reason why WhatsApp needs to require this. The app allows people to choose display names, and it would be simple for the company to make these display names the default for what a user sees if they don’t grant access to their contacts.
The second reason is that though WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages are both end-to-end encrypted, that encryption only helps protect against today’s threats—not threats from advanced quantum computers tomorrow. To counteract quantum computer threats (quantum computers may one day be able to break today’s encryption in minutes), Apple has added post-quantum cryptographic protocol level 3 (PQ3) to Messages. That means your iMessages today will still be protected against quantum attacks tomorrow.
WhatsApp currently lacks any kind of post-quantum cryptographic protocols.
Winner: Apple Messages
WhatsApp vs. Apple Messages: And the winner is…
Based on the above criteria, the winner is Apple Messages. The app offers an uncluttered, easy-to-navigate interface, has several fun text and chat effects, and has the most advanced security protecting your messages that is available today.
Still, WhatsApp is no slouch. It has feature-parity with Apple Messages in all of the areas that really count, like unsending and editing messages. It also has basic features that Apple Messages lacks, like archiving. And its biggest strength will always be something Apple refuses to offer: cross-device support. No matter if you have an Android or iPhone, you can send and receive WhatsApp messages.