WhatsApp: It will sync your contacts and you will get different lists
Historical change in WhatsApp: It will sync your contacts and you will get different lists in each of your accounts
Since its inception, WhatsApp has always borrowed mobile contacts, but things started to get complicated when the app added multi-device and multi-account support. It will get even more complicated when usernames arrive in the future as an alternative to traditional phone number-based contacts.
The app then had to follow the steps of other messaging apps, such as Telegram or Messenger, and synchronize contacts so that we could restore them when changing mobile phones. Until now, WhatsApp has never synchronized contacts, but instead takes advantage of the contacts saved on the mobile phone, which are generally synchronized with the Google account.
WhatsApp reads your mobile phone contacts to suggest people to message and fill in the names in the app. This has been sufficient for many years, but it is not enough when usernames can be accessed by WhatsApp at any time. Usernames are a form of WhatsApp contacts, so they will not be saved in your traditional mobile phone contacts.
We now know that WhatsApp is preparing for the first time to synchronize contacts in the account, which will be optional. If activated, our contacts can be included in the backup and should also be transferred if we use WhatsApp on a linked device.
It will also help us if we use two WhatsApp accounts on the same mobile phone, because in this case we will be able to have a different contact list for each account, which is very useful because until now WhatsApp has used the same contacts, those on the mobile phone.
Specifically, WhatsApp indicates that this contact synchronization will allow us to choose which contacts will be synchronized with our mobile phone and manage WhatsApp contacts for linked devices, in addition to keeping the contacts of each WhatsApp account separate from each other.
We still don’t know all the ins and outs of how WhatsApp contact syncing will work, though it will undoubtedly be a bit more complicated than the current method. That’s inevitable, since WhatsApp is much more complex today than it was a few years ago, making these kinds of changes inevitable.