WhatsApp has some decent decisions even after the complexity of being tied down to a single device at a time. WhatsApp Web is essentially a hack where any mess

WhatsApp has some decent decisions even after the complexity of being tied down to a single device at a time. WhatsApp Web is essentially a hack where any message you send through the web app is _always_ routed through your phone (which is why it needs to be connected all the time). Earlier you could not even view the media on the web client without first downloading it on your phone. But now it looks like they've hacked it further such that you can view the E2E encrypted message on the web app without downloading it to your phone. I guess it achieves this via shipping the decryption key to the web app (just for the current session) where it allows it to decrypt messages in the browser and using the phone just as a router of sorts. This is just speculation based on apparent behavior though.