WhatsApp problems: too old and won't update

Curious if anyone else got this today?

I have had this Gmail account since I got my first smart phone. Always logged in to it. They asked me to verify when hitting the button, but no buttons to choose to try and verify. Just continuous “try again”. I am already signed in, obviously. It’s how the phone operates now. New phone these few months, just downloaded WhatsApp I think in October, so pretty recent. No options or links to to try and do anything other than play some kind of game. . . ?

Samsung phone, android.

I tried changing the date on my phone, and whatsapp said the date is wrong, change it back. So that won’t work.

Appreciate any pointers if others have had this problem today (Dec. 22, 2025).

Or, maybe, whatspapp has gone the way of Line? The dodo :upside_down_face:

Do you have WhatsApp running on another device?

Can’t you download it directly from the WhatsApp website?

Nope, just this phone. I downloaded it onto this phone for family. Today, I just got the above messages. I can’t download their link, play store etc. Seems quit weird, even if I did accept their link/terms etc.

The problem seems to be your Google account and Play Store not working. Try updating any other app.

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I had a similar issue with another app. I couldn’t get past the install phase. I had my Google account and Play Store regions set to Canada. Once I set them to the region i was trying to download from it was resolved.

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Just go to the play store and manually update it.

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Cheers for the suggestions. I’m definitely set to Taiwan.

I logged out and in again on the playstore website. App still says authentication required, but no means of doing so.

The play store site does a loading sign then nothing after a while.

Only use it on this device and only for a few months. I’m kind of stumped.

Open your play store app directly and search for whatsapp and install or update it. It looks like you’re going through the Google play website to access the Play store, which is not working for you for some reason.

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Maybe it was installed from the store that came with the phone and not from Google Play store.

Had that happen before with a Samsung phone. Either had to log into a Samsung account, or delete it and install from Google Play.

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Cheers. Still won’t work though. I open the playstore app and get the same message, despite being logged in. I went to settings and have all the permissions allowed.

I get this screen from the APP.

As tango says, it was pre installed on the phone (samsung galaxy, also a pretty new phone early this year). I didn’t need to download it. But trying both ways, app won’t work, website still “loading” a couple hours later haha.