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Whatsapp Link Issue

WhatsApp native OSX app is installed or web-app is opened but links can’t open in native app on OSX and always tries to lunch a new web app if try to open in web app.

REGION: US-SOUTH

BROWSER: Google Chrome

We use WhatsApp links - Click to chat feature - to message customers quickly from our admin panel.

Click to chat

In the last days as it seems WhatsApp has updated something and broke the links overnight.

Neither of the formats we used previously seem to work:

https://wa.me/<number>
https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=<number>

If we try to open links with WhatsApp client OSX:

Says OSX is not installed

WhatsApp not installed

If we try to open links with WhatsApp Web client:

Will launch other instance in a new tab/window and loads for seconds

sznrbrt
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2 Answers2

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As it is extremely annoying for those who use this feature (like us), I'm going to leave my findings here:

Opening up the console revealed that there is a problem with the format as it does not request permission to open the native app, since it brakes something in content security policy when trying to redirect to the following link: whatsapp://send/?phone=

SOLUTION:

USE THE CUSTOM URL SCHEME FORMAT - whatsapp://send/?phone=&text&source&data

With this the browser will be able to request permission to open the native app. If you accept all works smooth.

sznrbrt
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Let's take a look at the Official Whatsapp Share URL Documentation. These formats should work...

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=YourShareTextHere

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=YourShareTextHere&phone=123

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=123

All of these seem to work today! Maybe something went wrong?

Also, make sure you do not use wa.me as a URL! If you do, you will only be able to send a message if you supply a phone argument, and very few people are doing that! Usually you share a link that has a message, like check out this cool site. Source: GitHub Ticket: WhatsApp short link without phone number not working anymore.

If you are interested in watching a project that keeps track of these URLs, then check us out!: https://github.com/bradvin/social-share-urls#whatsapp

Social Share URLs

Community
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HoldOffHunger
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  • well...the first link does not contain the link format that you propose. the official docs says one should use the "https://wa.me/" format, which now redirects to the format you described as: "https://api.whatsapp.com/" It's weird. Previously this redirection did not work. I guess it was broken only for a few weeks and got fixed. – sznrbrt Jun 09 '20 at 20:27
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    sznrbrt: Actually, you **do not** want to use wa.me. `wa.me` will cause a server 500 error if you omit the phone number, and only send a text message. (Yes, I diverged from the official documentation for a good reason.) Take a look, we just handled this exact problem at the project I listed above: https://github.com/bradvin/social-share-urls/issues/655 I updated the answer above, let me know if this helps! – HoldOffHunger Jun 10 '20 at 13:18