Just FYI, the one in OR is fully vibe coded. Might not bother you, just FYI
Yes, you don’t want to know what actual WA does do…
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I believe the only correct word to describe its interface would be ‘clusterfuck’. Everything’s all over the place, there’s a tab-based interface but changing a tab also changes the pages in the stack, did I mention there’s actually TWO tab-based interfaces, one at the bottom and one at the top, pulldown menus and context menus have so many options they literally take up the entire phone screen so they’re unusable, there’s hundreds of settings and there’s a button at the top of the settings to take you to “More settings”, you need to constantly swap back and forth with a terminal window to copy over commands to make it actually work like anyone would expect, read markers don’t work, the translations are nonsensical because they’re made by a computer, both the name of the app and the logo are literally WhatsApp’s property so OpenRepos will get hit with a copyright infringement notice, and I could go on forever. Its only redeeming quality is that sending and receiving messages works somewhat.
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FWIW this can also happen between Android phones, as it did once to me.
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Tested a lot now. Even with apk from homepage. Registering as primary or as secondary device. Both fails. I am quite sure that SailfishOS 5.2.0.27 & MicroG are the issue. Seems that WhatsApp doesn’t like the environment.
Today I installed whatsapp through aurora and i had no problem to register it as a second device. It is running pretty smooth. I’m now testing battery life without switching things off.
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It might be your account is flagged for extra special security fun times. This has been reported multiple times across microG community, apparently.
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Oh…that would be really annoying…!
So, this is based entirely on what some guy in Matrix told me. But, apparently if your account gets flagged, WhatsApp starts requiring strong integrity from Play Integrity. Which obviously doesn’t exist in SFOS’s Android App Support.
The famos support says that my account has no restrictions. 
Moved from Fairphone 4 Android to J2026 a couple days ago.
WA from aurora store (spoofed as pixel 9A), microG enabled and set up.
I ran into no issues whatsoever, received the code on the old phone, inserted it into Jolla’s WA and could log in.
As soon as I turn on AppSupport I receive notifications from it.
I’m new to everything Jolla so let me know if there are any info I can provide to help you figure it out.
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as it is not possible in sailfish os to either let the app take or revoke permissions and neither are there any system settings to take or revoke permissions, it is intentional that it ships with minimum needed permissions. as sailfish os is a privacy oriented operating system, i think this is the right choice. you should intentionally want to give the app those permissions through typing in your password, or at least hit enter and hopefully read the command you’re applying. i tried to make it as convenient as possible by being able to copy the command by tapping. whisperfish, the signal client lets you copy the command by hand, as of this writing.
read notifications i wanted to exclude, because they can make you addicted, and i don’t want to support that, but they could be an opt in choice like the permissions, only without copying commands.
the other points are fair points and they’re truly improvable.
please also consider that I’m not paid in any way to do this and I’m doing it in my spare time, which is plenty right now, because I’m currently between jobs, as one says it. also I’m in n way a professional developer. i know how to code, algorithms and am capable of higher mathematics. so I’m not the best man for this job, but since nobody else that would be capable of doing it better has done it, i felt the need to do it myself and this is the result. i gladly consider feedback and feature requests and implement them as good as i can. the same with the browser. are there people who can do it way better than i? yes there are. jolla can do an excellent job at making the browser, but due to quality assurance and lack of money for this company it was lacking behind several extended support releases. as i felt there is a need for an up to date web browser, i worked for two weeks 13 hours a day almost non stop, also on weekends to make one major version jump, an in between came out the last esr, so i joined invested another week to resolve the merge conflicts, segmentation faults, hardware rendering and rudimentary extension support through adapting the javascript application programming interfaces from android to suit sailfish os, which was new territory on this os.
big thanks to jolla for keeping it up and open so anyone can learn and contribute easily.
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p.s.: you can disable the top and the bottom bar in more settings separately. and btw this was a feature request.
Wait, did you commit PR for the browser update? Can you through link here? I’m not a dev, so can’t really look in to it, but sounded like you worked really hard to make it better! Which is amazing, all the love native browser get better for all 
i didn’t make a pull request, but i put it up on openrepos, so everybidy can have an up to date browser, evn though it might have some quirks. i recommend using storeman to download it. sailfish-browser-next153 | OpenRepos.net — Community Repository System
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If any way possible and you think it could be accepted, even some parts like extension support, please make PR for official native browser! That will help us all and all the new comers there is official repo for ESR140 and Jolla just opened one for ESR153
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they asked me already if they may take some of the new features, although they don’t have to and i said yes of course. so i guess they will cherry pick what they want to take. i don’t dare to make apull request right now
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SMS verification is an API that appears broken on SailfishOS. I don’t know if it’s because SMS when delivered get stuck on SailfishOS side and the corresponding intent is not broadcast to the appsupport side. microg should have the support but it may only work if the sms is actually received on the android side. Just broadcasting the intent post receive intent does not work, maybe faking the intent of receiving an sms works.
But in any case, I can confirm that whatsapp install works.
Well, still super cool! Thank you for your hard work to make SFOS ecosystem better
Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to help. It’s just that in its current state, it’s only a native app in the sense that it follows the ambience. Everything else is functional for a robot, but frustrating for a human.
If you want to improve it:
- You must change the name and logo to something that doesn’t include the intellectual property of Whatsapp, otherwise you and OpenRepos will at some point, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, be hit by Facebook’s lawyers.
- The top bar makes no sense whatsoever and should be removed entirely. The option to disable it doesn’t work anyway - it’s no longer visible, but it still takes up space. But don’t interpret this as me saying the option to disable it needs to be fixed - the bar should be removed. Changing the grid size is a setting you might change once and then never again, it’s not something that deserves to be visible at all times. If someone changes their grid size so often that they need to have a permanently visible option to change it on the fly, they’re using it wrong.
- If you want to use a tab-based interface at the bottom, they shouldn’t simultaneously change between pages in the stack. It’s either-or.
- Regarding read markers, I should’ve explained better in the previous post, I wasn’t talking about the read/unread indicators on chat messages (didn’t even notice they weren’t there), but about the unread messages counter in the main overview. It doesn’t synchronise that messages have already been read on another client, so you have to keep checking everything to make sure you didn’t miss something.
- The cover should be an actual cover showing the latest (new) messages, and not a live miniaturised view of the app.
- For which options should appear in the pulley menus or long-press menus, have a look at some other messaging apps like Whisperfish, Jolla’s Messages, Fernschreiber, etc. You really only need a few things, and everything else can go behind ‘Profile’ or ‘Settings’. Options like ‘Reload’, ‘Refresh’ etc shouldn’t even be there, the app should reload itself when necessary.
- For the chat view, again, have a look at other messaging apps and just copy what they’re doing. I’m talking about the visual style, text bubbles, font size, alignment (of bubbles, text, images, etc), and so on.
- If you use bottom pulley menus, they should attach directly to the bottom of the screen, not to anything else. That being said, in the chat view, pretty much everything that’s in the bottom pulley menu should just be moved to the contact’s page, or show up as an option when you tap the attachment button.
- Speaking of which, when you swipe to the contact’s page and then back, your position in the chat is not where you left it.
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