Howto setup the telepathy account: mc-tool add whosthere/whatsapp "WhatsappAccount" string:account=[phonenumber incl. country code without leading+ or 00] string:password=[base64 encode] mc-tool enable whosthere/whatsapp/_3[phonenumber] mc-tool auto-connect whosthere/whatsapp/_3[phonenumber] on If empathy does not show any contacts, then try starting empathy from shell. If it does complain about not being able to open the adressbook: rm .local/share/evolution/adressbook