Caller: “Hey, I’m the delivery person, I have difficulty locating your home. Can you please WhatsApp me your current location on this number?”
Me: “Err..mmm.. okay”
Now clearly I’ll go to the call list, save the number that I might never call after this delivery, think of a name for that phone contact, feeling guilty for saving it as delivery guy 47. Save the contact. Go and search for WhatsApp, search for “delivery guy 47” and then send.
All this, just to send a “hi” or a “location” to a number which is new for my phonebook.
There is no escape from WhatsApp as it has emerged as the de facto in modern communication at least in India. And saving numbers just to send once-in-a-lifetime communication to someone is not cool.
So, here’s what I did. I learned how to develop apps for iOS and I developed a ducking simple app using flutter (Let me know if you want the source code)
It does a very small thing: You Copy the number, paste it into this app and send the WhatsApp message. That’s it.
It’s for iPhones currently because I assumed Android being a more open ecosystem must have something like this. But on iOS it was damn difficult to find something (or maybe I was not searching right).
Here are two to three use cases for this app which I regularly use :) Each use case is in each of the videos.
And yes, here is the app link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/send-whatsapp-to-any-number/id1603995029#?platform=iphone
This video shows, coping the number from the recent call list and sending a WhatsApp Hi to that number. The first use case.
This next video shows, taking a photo of a number (it can even be a business card or anything). Imagine a business card was given to you and you need to send a WhatsApp message to that number, this video is for that use case.
This video is actually exciting. I was on the call of Spicejet trying to get a wheelchair for my mom for one of her flights. The SpiceJet guys told me after the call that I can also use WhatsApp for the rest of the services and dictated me a number. I wrote it down. Now sending Whatsapp to that would have been a teeny tiny more effort. But I did send them a WhatsApp message. See the video below.
My app does nothing, it’s the pure power of iOS handwriting recognition but the workflow is amazing. Have a look.
I hope you liked the post. This is my first medium post. :)
