Contact Scopes & Whatsapp

missing-root

Whatsapp is not a nice App, as like Signal it bypasses the "least privilege" model by implementing things like contact management or photopicker in the app.

Now I know a person that uses this app. They use it all the time so isolating it in a seperate profile would be an option but currently it is in the main profile with storage and contact scopes.

I thought adding a tag "WA" in the contacts, adding all
Whatsapp-only contacts to that tag and then allowing whatsapp access to only that tag would work.

But there are multiple problems

whatsapps integrated contact creation is broken (it doesnt have contact access so yeah, wanted)
when adding a new contact to that tag, it doesnt end up in the scope

Can you help me fix this? Is the lack of updating a missing feature?

other8026

missing-root when adding a new contact to that tag, it doesnt end up in the scope

I just tested on my phone and it is working fine for me. I didn't try on WhatsApp though because I don't use it.

I did everything via the contact scopes settings. I created a new label, then I added contacts to that label, then I added that label to the app's contact scopes list. I launched the app I tested with and all contacts showed up. I closed the app and added one additional contact, opened the app again, and the new contact was there.

Depending on the account you're creating the label in, maybe something is syncing with an app or service and messing up your new label's list?

SovereignCopper

I've found that for those people who'd like to use WhatsApp, it would be better to have Contact Scopes implemented in an exclusive way: allow WhatsApp to access all contacts except for those in the following group(s). Most of the times, the group of people who'd prefer to not show up in the contacts list for WhatsApp is smaller, static and known beforehand. If a new contact is added by the user (even via WhatsApp), manually having to add that WhatsApp-friendly group is easily forgotten.

@missing-root

when adding a new contact to that tag, it doesnt end up in the scope

If you only mean by "it doesn't end up in the scope" that WhatsApp still doesn't see the contact, then it is probably because WhatsApp has delayed synchronization of your contacts. Try closing the app and wait a minute, or force synchronization via Settings > Accounts.

missing-root

I will have a look again, afaik we added a new contact to that scope and reloaded the contact list withing Whatsapp, didnt show

SovereignCopper

@missing-root Still no dice?

missing-root

This is fixed. It does work, and the contact scope is updated automatically. The issue was not adding a phone number 🤦‍♂️