WhatsApp works with Google Chrome 36+

whatsapp

I'm trying to use the WhatsApp web interface, but since a few days ago its giving me this error:

WhatsApp works with Google Chrome 36+

To use WhatsApp, update Chrome or use Mozilla Firefox, Safari,
Microsoft Edge or Opera.

enter image description here

I'm using "Chromium Version 70.0.3538.110 (Official Build) Built on Ubuntu , running on Ubuntu 18.04 (64-bit)"

Refreshing the page doesn't seem to work to fix it.

The linked duplicate did not help me, first, I expect Chromium 70 to be detected as Google Chrome 70, since it has all the required features, and I don't have any of the listed extensions installed from the second answer.

OS: Ubuntu 18.04 (64-bit)

Browser: Chromium Version 70.0.3538.110

User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/70.0.3538.110 Chrome/70.0.3538.110 Safari/537.36

Extensions: (everything comes from the google chrome Webstore) 

h264ify: version 1_0_9
ARC cookie exchange: version 0_1_0
GitHub Repository Size: version 0_4_1
AutoReviewComments: version 1_4_3
Octotree: version 2_5_1
uBlock Origin: version 1_17_4
Stylus: version 1_5_2
Tampermonkey: version 4_7_44
Dropbox for Gmail: version 1_1_8
Chrome Connectivity Diagnostics: version 1_2_1
Chrome Remote Desktop: version 70_0_3538_21
HTTPS Everywhere: version 2018_10_31
Google Docs Offline: version 1_7
Pastebin.com: version 3_0_2
Desktop Notifications for Android: version 4_5_2
Save to Google Drive: version 2_1_1
NetBeans Connector: version 1_1_5
LastPass: Free Password Manager: version 4_19_0_5
Advanced REST client: version 10_0_12
Terms of Service; Didn’t Read: version 2_0_0
Invert Page Colors: version 0_9_3
Render Whitespace on GitHub: version 1_3_12
StackEdit: version 1_0_13, Apps Launcher: version 2_4_11
Chrome extension source viewer: version 1_6_9
Google Keep Chrome Extension: version 3_1_18495_1258
Google Hangouts: version 2018_1108_1646_1
Vue.js devtools: version 4_1_5
Google Hangouts: version 1_3_10
WebRTC Desktop Sharing: version 5_3
Don't Fuck With Paste: version 2_5
Robot Theme, inspired by Android™: version 0_2_3
Enhanced Steam: version 9_9
Simple WebSocket Client: version 0_1_3
Data Saver: version 2_0_2
f*ck overlays: version 1_1_2

Best Answer

Workaround: Change your user agent (e.g. explained here https://winaero.com/blog/change-user-agent-chrome/) to chrome and everything works fine.

I set it to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.80 Safari/537.36

I also wrote them an email, will post updates:

Dear WhatsApp-Support Team,

for many months, probably years the web-app was not only supported for chrome but also for it's step brother chromium. Technically they are interchangeable, both support the same features and standards. But since about a week ago the app stopped working on chromium. It doesn't seem to be a problem of a missing feature as spoofing the user agent allows me to still use the app. It's just kinda hacky and I'd prefer it to work native (again).

Season's greetings

Update 17. Dec: Ping-pong with WA support

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