Since some time ago, you can type the number directly in the search bar and it would let you message it, at least on iOS

Same on Android.

Ah, this is handy, as Europe (even more than the UK somehow) seems to love engaging in customer service via WhatsApp. On the continent I end up having to use it to manage bookings for Hotels and restaurants. I removed my profile picture because of this.

Huh. Never had that here (Germany), otoh it’s super common in South Africa

You can just paste the number into the "start new chat" search input and start a chat from there. You don't need any of this.

:-O

I didn't even suspected this was an option! I won't deny that I'm a bit distracted, but the UI discovery itself is also very poor.

Agreed, it's not intuitive at all, but at least it's there...

Or from any browser: https://wa.me/<phone number, just the digits, starting with country code>

In fact that's simply what the app does. It's just a handy way to have it on the phone as a shortcut and not having to remember the details of how to do it. Although with the sibling comments about Whatsapp itself allowing to do all this, the helper app seems less useful now.