Whatsapp is one of the most popular messaging apps on the internet with over a billion users worldwide. It has all the features you can expect out of an excellent messenger application and boasts of end-to-end encryption — the kind of security you need — and almost everyone uses it. However, there are a lot of features that we want which aren’t there in the official WhatsApp. An inbuilt app lock, better privacy settings, the ability to send messages to unsaved numbers all these are heavily requested features that the official app doesn’t have.
So the nerdy among us turned to mods. Now, these mods have become so popular that a lot of people have started using them. You don’t need to be an Android expert to install and use them, and the features they offer are way better than the original app.
There are numerous mods available for Whatsapp. The most common ones are
- YoWhatsapp (I use this one)
- GBWhatsapp
- WhatsApp Plus
- FMWhatsapp (most recent release)
There are other mods out there as well. However, keep in mind that when using mods, there’s a chance that the developer is sniffing your data, so being sure that you’re safe is the top priority.
Also read: Check out this WhatsApp Mod with added features and improved privacy
Which one should you use?
Let me get this out of the way first; all these mods are pretty much identical to each other. However, it’s the little details that make one stand out from the other.
Updates
The most important aspect, in my opinion. Every time Whatsapp rolls out an update, the developers of these mods have to update their apps as well, which means you’re at the mercy of these devs to be able to be updated to the latest build version.
Why is this such a big deal? In every update, Whatsapp fixes one or two base issues with itself or enhances security. Since these apps are necessarily Whatsapp on steroids, keeping the base layer updated is always a good idea.
Out of all the apps mentioned above, YoWhatsapp gets the most regular updates and pretty quickly too. GBWhatsapp and WhatsappPlus come second.
Features
That’s the whole point of it.
Well, almost all these apps offer pretty much the same features. There’s only so much you can ask for anyway.
You’ll get more privacy features, the ability to hide or freeze your last seen and still being able to see the other person’s. You can set custom privacy options per contact, and you can have different chat backgrounds for every chat. The biggest of all — you can see deleted messages and even statuses.
You can even send any file and a lot bigger files than you usually could with WhatsApp. Images and videos are sent without any loss in quality or compression. You can choose to put long videos on your status, and the app would automatically split them for you.
There’s a lot of customisation as well. You can completely flip the way your Whatsapp looks by using different themes of creating your own. I find the YoThemes store a bit better than the GBThemes one, personally speaking.
Why I use YoWhatsapp?
I’ve tried many mods, and most of them are almost the same. However, I would get random bans on other mods, something which I never faced on YoWhatsapp except one time.
That one time was when the internet went all out on Whatsapp having a critical security vulnerability, and Whatsapp reacted to the backlash by updating its core version. Even then the dev took to twitter to explain what’s happening and stayed in constant touch until he fixed the problem.
And that’s the biggest reason I decided to stick with YoWa. The sole developer, Yousef-al-Basha, is a reliable person and quite approachable. This builds the much-needed developer trust you need to use apps that work with your personal data all the time.
But that’s really subjective; to be on the safe side, do not share your personally identifiable or financial data, including login credentials on mods. Or even on stock Whatsapp app.
