1) a way for apps to display a view that shows the contact name for a phone number, with specified styling / sizing / etc, but without being able to determine what that contact name is.
2) an App Store rule that forbids apps from requiring contact access unless they can't function without it. WhatsApp forces you to provide contact access, giving Facebook your place in the social graph even if you don't use Facebook, even though WhatsApp should be usable (using phone numbers) without it.
WhatsApp works so well because it is tied into the same contacts that you already have on your phone. Without access to your phone’s contacts you would need to set up and manage an entirely separate set of contacts. Right now, Grandma could download WhatsApp and instantly start chatting with her granddaughter without having to remember what her phone number is because it’s already there. That’s a major selling point of WhatsApp.
I revoked Contacts access in WhatsApp a year ago. It works just fine. Problem is: WhatsApp only shows the phone numbers in the list and NOT the usernames of people. This is rather annoying, because I don't know any phone numbers by heart. Profile pics help a bit, but people change them and often don't have pictures of themselves.
Signal shows the nicknames next to the numbers which is a really nice feature and makes it pretty much perfectly usable without contacts permission, except that it constantly nags to grant the permission.
I understand that. I'm just saying that there should be a middle ground between "give Facebook full access to my entire contact list" and "cannot use the app at all". For example, WhatsApp should be able to trigger a contacts picker, without needing to have access to the full list of contacts. And it could even be able to show a styled view for "the contact name for this phone number" without needing to know what the name is.
WhatsApp does work if you revoke Contacts permission after setting it up, but IIRC you can't onboard when you first install the app if you don't grant it. Forcing the granting of the permission should be against App Store rules.
I use WhatsApp after revoking its contacts permission and it's pretty much fine. As an aside, same with Signal, and I really don't understand why a supposedly privacy-focused app like Signal nags hard to get contacts permission when it works perfectly fine without; it even shows people's chosen nicknames next to their numbers.
You can easily solve this with UX. Select new message, show the picker, select one or more contacts and then you have the identifier you need and you don’t need blanket permissions.
1) a way for apps to display a view that shows the contact name for a phone number, with specified styling / sizing / etc, but without being able to determine what that contact name is.
2) an App Store rule that forbids apps from requiring contact access unless they can't function without it. WhatsApp forces you to provide contact access, giving Facebook your place in the social graph even if you don't use Facebook, even though WhatsApp should be usable (using phone numbers) without it.