WhatsApp Rolls Out Redesigned iPad Interface With Mac-Style Sidebar

The sidebar mirrors the layout already available in WhatsApp for Mac and provides quick access to Chats, Updates, Communities, Calls, Meta AI and other sections of the app. It appears by default in place of the bottom tab bar, and users can hide it to give more space to the chat list and the conversation view.

WABetaInfo reported that the sidebar takes up a portion of the screen. On iPad this is rarely a problem, the site said, because the display is large enough to show the sidebar, the chat list and the conversation interface at the same time. Users who prefer a larger conversation area can collapse the sidebar, which expands the chat list and the conversation toward the center of the screen.

The new sidebar is available to some beta testers running the latest TestFlight build, WABetaInfo reported, and some users on the regular App Store version have also begun to see it. As is often the case with WhatsApp rollouts, the interface may take some time to reach everyone on either the beta or the stable version of the app, the report said.

The change follows several months of Liquid Glass beta testing. WhatsApp began adapting its iOS app to the Liquid Glass visual overhaul last October, but brought the redesign to iPad much later, in a limited beta test last June. At that time, WABetaInfo reported that the iPad redesign included Liquid Glass-style tabs, buttons and context menus while retaining the same bottom tab bar used on iPhone.